
%77^/,r]Vo 



>NS 



T) t^opn, "^ ~--^ phical and me- 

cha '^'''^'epos after the proof- 
cop ^^ lering it impos- 
sib.- .he printer until 
the compicL.^ inexcusable and 
painful instance of tui^ - 

Page 

94, line 9 from the bottom, which should read, "Of the 
whole number six were Southern men — four Virgin- 
ians and two Marylanders." 

Among the others the reader will readily recognize 
the following : 

55, line 12: eliminate comma after "south" and use it after 
"instances." 

67: constitution only when it means the National document 
is capitalized. 

69: for "addendum of" read "addendum to." 

76, line 6: for "was" read "were." 

79, line 11: for "and the" read "and then." 

83, line 9: for "begins" read "begin." 

104, line 17: for "and their importation" read "and the impor- 
tation of slaves." 
108, last line: for "Rhodes remarked" read "Rhodes' remark." 
115, line 2: for "geen" read "been." 
129 line i: for "King" read "king." 
134, line 24: for "parficefis" read "pariicipes." 
165: make same correction. 
179, line 15: for "S. E." read "S. F." 
231, line 24: for "was" read "were." 
247, line 27: for "simply" read "simple." 
267, line 6: for "place" read "placed." 
278, line 30: for "what of " read "want of." 
280, line 14: for "these" read "those." 
284, line 28: for "wer" read "were." 
307, Note: for "Hoy" read "Hay." 



Northern Rebellion and 



Southern Secession. 




BY 



E. W. R. EWING, LL B. 



^iHt 



RICHMOND, V7\.: 

J. L. HILL COnPAMV, 

1904. 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
APR 23 1904 
^ Copyrleht Entry 

CLASS 'O- XXc. No. 

COPY B 



OU-YKIGHTED, 1904, i; 
E. W. R. EWlXCi. 



To 

The Memory of Father, 

From Sumter to Ap- 
pomattox a brave 
Confederate officer ; 
until death a citizen of 
unblemished life, and 
ever devotedly loyal 
to the imperishable 
principles of the Amer- 
ican Government. ::: 



I 



CONTENTS. 



I. The Formation. pages. 

Importance of Constitutional landmarks. — Declaration of 
Independence not a government agreement. — ^Von Hoist's 
error as to the birth of the nation refuted. — Origin of his 
doctrine. — Articles of Confederation the first union for a 
common government. — The Constitution succeeded the 
Confederacy. — Under the Constitution it was mutually 
agreed by the high sovereign contracting powers that cer- 
tain functions of their respective sovereigns should be ex- 
ercised by a common head. — ^In the final acts of ratifica- 
tion and Constitutional amendment, each State stipulated 
that she should be the judge of the perversion of the com- 
mon trust imposed in the central government, and that 
she might withdraw at her discretion. — The proof of this. 11-27 

II. IxsTA>-CES OF Asserted State Sovereignty. 

Constitutional construction produced the first political par- 
ties. — Doctrine of each. — The first rebellion against the 
United States was in Pennsylvania. — It showed the preva- 
lent idea that the people of a State, or any considerable 
number of them, could determine when the Federal gov- 
ernment became obnoxioiLS, and that they might rightly 
use force to resist an objectionable procedure. — A similar 
doctrine produced the State of Franklin (Tennessee). — 
Early promulgation of the doctrine of secession and State 
rebellion by Ihe Federal party in the North. — Distinction 
between the nullification of the Hartford Convention and 
the nullifying propaganda of South Carolina. — Michigan 
in rebellion against Federal authority 28-37 

III. The Legal Status of Slavery. — Early Agitation. 

The justification of secession in 1861 does not depend 
upon sustaining the theory of original State sover- 
eignty. — ^Upon what the right of secession did de- 
pend. — ^Neither the righteousness nor the perpetuity of 
slavery involved in the Civil War. — The Constitution left 
slavery subject to the State laws, except as to fugitives 
and the African slave trade. — The Constitution of the 
United States recognized slaves as valuable legal property. 
Official evidences of this. — The agitation of slavery began 
in the North by an unpatriotic faction, and without ex- 
cuse or justification 38-53 



4 CONTENTS. 

IV. The Missouri Compromise. 

Slavery in national politics not the inception of Northern 
agitation. — Agriculture slave labor's only profitable in- 
dustry. — The economics of slave and free labor the basis 
of the political divisions. — Slavery in the Missouri coun- 
try protected by treaty. — No legal or moral grounds for 
the Missouri Compromise. — Missouri becomes a State. — 
Her expatriation of free negroes the result of Northern 
interference. — The Compromise repealed in 1854. — The 
Kansas-Nebraska bill constitutional and republican. — 
Northern objection to it examined: (1) "Bad faith." — 
The unconstitutional "personal liberty laws" of Northern 
States. — Precedents to the Kansas-Nebraska bill 54-68 

V. The National Character of Slave Legislation. — Cotton and 

Slavery; Slavery in the Old Northioest; Slavery and 
Oregon. 

Second objection to the Kansas-Nebraska bill : the spread of 
slavery. — Emancipation in the South as late as 1830. — 
Meaning of national slave legislation. — Causes for the de- 
cline of Southern emancipation tendency. — Not caused by 
the cotton gin. — ^Cotton not king. — Northern emancipa- 
tion methods responsible for procrastinating Southern 
emancipation. — Econoniic causes for emancipation in the 
North. — ^Tlie Ordinance of 1787, as interpreted under the 
Constitution, did not prohibit slavery either to the Terri- 
tories or States in the Old Northwest. — The cause of the 
common error respecting the slavery clause in the Ordi- 
nance. — The error examined. — History of local slave laws 
in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Oregon 69-105 

VI. The Negro and Ohio. — Ordinance of 1787; Economic Condi- 

tions Regulating Slavery in Ohio and Missouri. 
Importance of Ohio's slavery regulations. — The Ohio Com- 
pany secures land. — Effort by the first constitutional con- 
vention to secure the recognition of legal slavery. — Why 
defeated. — Economic causes. — Ohio's experience with free 
negroes a lesson to the South. — Gerritt Smith and John 
Brown added evidence to the fact that the negroes of that 
day were "without fitness or capacity to provide for them- 
selves." — Government patronage responsible for slavery in 
the Mississippi Valley. — Slavery of the early French. — 
Conclusions 106-119 

VII. The American Slave Trade. 

Objections to the Kansas-Nebraska bill further considered. — 
The South prohibited the African slave trade; the North 
became the trading monarchs. — ^Beginnings of American 
slaverj^ — ^Slavery first legalized in the North.— Horrors 
on Northern slave ships. — The unprofitable Northern slave 
was sold to Brazil. — 'Northern and Southern legislation 
contrasted. — Northern and Southern morals. — Northern 
courts and the African slave trade down to 1862. — South- 
M^ ern participation in the trade 120-141 



CONTENTS. ^ 

PAGES, 

VIII Legality of the Fibst Kansas Elections.— T/ieir Relation 
to the Civil Warj Facts from Original Records. 
The North resolved to dominate Kansas "at all hazards" to 
save her political power.— Nothing in the situation to jus- 
tify other means than a legal use of the ballot.— The 
North would not accept the decision of the ballot.— From 
proposed the Northern movement passed to overt, armed, 
bloody rebellion.— Usual historical version of the early 
Kansas affairs.— Its importance here.— Tlie South's fun- 
damental position stated.— The Congressional investigat- 
ing committee.— Erroneous claims in the Majority Report. 
Ilfeo-al votes do not invalidate an election unless by their 
rej^tion the result would be changed.— This rule applied 
to the early Kansas elections leaves them valid, legal, hon- 
est, Southern victories.— Synopsis of evidence concerning 
the first election.— Conclusions 14-- 163 

IX. The Kansas Legislature and Overt Northern Rebellion. 

National importance of the election of March 30, 1855.— Its 
results.- Further analysis of the Majority Report.— Wit- 
nesses swore that free- State m.en voted the Southern 
ticket.— Reeder's letters admits Northern wrong.- This 
election under the supervision of Northern sympathizers, 
thus reducing opportunity for Southern fraud.— Errors of 
standard authors.— Schouler's error concerning the elec- 
tion of the 22d of May.— The Kansas rebellion found its 
source and strength in the North.— Origin and nature of 
the emigrant aid movement.— Early rush of Northern war 
material to Kansas.— Historical credibility of witnesses 
whose story is the basis of the Northern version.— North- 
em illegality in this election.— The rebellion spread from 
Massachusetts.— Its wide support in the North.— The ter- 
rible oath administered to the rebels.— Governor Shan- 
non's message 164-^0. 

X. Cumulative Evidence of Northern Rebellion.— Fur^/ier Light 
from Official Records. 
Northern writers attempt to' suppress the fact of Northern 
rebellion against the United States.— Tlie first attack 
upon Lawrence, or the so-called "border ruffian invasion." 
Additional sources of evidence of organized, armed opposi- 
tion.— The President of the United States declared the 
free-State movement rebellion.— United States army offi- 
cers give unimpeachable evidence of the organized, armed 
rebellion in defiance of the Presidential proclamation.— 
The civil side of the rebellion as given by Northern men 
under oath.— The last of the Missouri raids.— Buford's 
Southern movement.— Abbott's high-handed assumption of 
authority.— Montgomery attacks the Federal soldiers and 
attempts to burn Fort Scott under cover of night. — Wo- 
men and children imperiled.— The Northern rebellion an 
effort to open new markets for her manufacturers 209-240 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGES. 

XI. Depredations Affecting the Existing Southern States. 

The second count of the indictment against the North. — Dr. 
Hart's error. — Fanaticism, rebellion, or dangerous insan- 
ity. — Fugitive slave laws of the North. — Dr. Channing's ^ 
impossible substitute for the fugitive slave law. — Scriptu- 
ral command and legal provisions. — Early origin of the 
"Underground Railroad." — Losses by reason of 241-254 

XII. Exacerbation and Proscription. 

Early origin of Northern insurrectionaiy literature. — Its 
effects in the South. — Its great extent.— It prevented 
emancipation. — ^History of the Northern treatment of the 
negro discouraged Southeni emancipation. — Southern 
legislation further examined. — Its liberal provisions .... 255-290 

XIII. Universal Histort of Slavery. — Disregard of its Lessons 

by Northern Abolitionists. 
Slavery in England and Europe. — Causes of their emancipa- 
tion. — Same laws of progress would have removed South- 
em slavery without war 291-297 

XIV. Conclusive Evidences of Ijiminext Evil. — Connection Be- 

tween Lincoln's Election and Secession; John Broicn 
Representative of a Large and Dangerous Faction. 

The Republican party more anti-negro than anti-slavery. — 
Unreliability of some historic sources. — The truth about 
the appointment of the special Kansas committee.^-North- 
ern endorsement of Helper's book. — Harper's Ferry raid, 
and Northern connection Avith 299-355 

XV. Feoji Harper's Ferry to the End. — The Lincoln Republicans 

in Congress Abet the Treason in Kansas. 

The subversionists at the helm. — Tjght from the records. . . 356-364 
Notes 365 et seq. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

Doctor Theodore Clarke Smith, imtil recently instructor in the 
University of Michigan, in his Liberty and Free Soil Parties (Har- 
vard Historical Series), page 4, says: "That no attempt is here 
made to cover the entire field of anti-slavery action, but mainly its 
political aspects, must not be understood to imply that the politi- 
cal anti-slavery agitation was more important than purely moral 
and religious action; for the appeal to the conscience was in fact 
the cause and condition of the existence of anti-slavery sentiment, 
and continued steadily in operation during the entire course oi 
the Liberty, Free Soil, and Eepublican Parties." This is the epit- 
ome of that contention which insists that the ante-bellum course 
of the South was so grossly immoral and irreligious that the Civil 
War had its origin in an effort to check or overcome various move- 
ments which had grown out of the higher moral and religious con- 
victions peculiar to a large number in the North. About this con- 
tention as a center cluster all the issues which may be denominated 
as the causes of the war. Its correctness is of prime importance to 
the student who would properly grasp the political history of that 
period. To teach that the North had a reliable, safe, or worthy 
guide in what is called the "conscience" of that period, — that opera- 
tion of moral faculty or religious nature which was the "cause and 
condition of the anti-slavery sentiment," — is believed to be a funda- 
mental error. Moral and religious convictions are always caused; 
they are results of information; and so it follows that if the infor- 
mation for any reason be incorrect, the convictions which it in- 
duces are without justifiable foundation, and any action based 
upon such convictions is inexcusable and unjustifiable. To this 
there is but one exception, and that is where a conviction is based 
upon information the truth or accuracy of which he who holds such 
conviction had no possible chance to test. Even then there must 
never have been a time when he could have controlled his condition. 
Where this is true the right or wrong of the act induced by er- 
roneous convictions is unaltered, the actor is merely relieved of 
moral condemnation or liability to legal punishment. 



O INTRODUCTORY. 

Moral and religious fanaticism has been at the bottom of many 
of the great movements of the world. The Seljuk Turks, to give 
an instance or two, obtained possession of the Holy Land in lOD-t. 
From that time for many years the Christians suffered great cruel- 
ties at the hands of the conquerors. But it was the wildest of re- 
ligious fanaticism that drove Peter tlie Hermit to arouse all France 
and Italy to that insane enthusiasm which gave to the world the 
first Crusaders, — that great army whose vanguard robbery and deso- 
lation hailed by the destruction of nearly three thousand souls. 
However much the Holy Land needed redemption from its bond- 
age, the Hermit's method was born of folly. Again, — seventy thou- 
sand Jews and Mohammedans were massacred simply because the}- 
rejected tJie Christian religion; yet "after this most shocking atro- 
city" the murderers sang hymns of praise to God ! ! Eeligious fa- 
naticism brought a stigma to the English name in the slaughter 
of three thousand five hundred Saracean hostages by Richard Coeur 
de Lion. It was the maddest of Christian fanaticism which started 
30,000 children on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, only to die on 
the way of hunger and fatigue. In our own America, even prior to 
the anti-slavery crusade, New England herself furnishes an instance 
of the ridiculous contradictions too often produced by a perverted 
moral or religious judgment. In 1763-'64 the General Assembly 
of Pennsylvania was composed mostly of Quakers. "While it sup- 
ported from public moneys bodies of Christian Indians, the As- 
sembly, owing to its Quaker majority, refused to sustain the hardy 
border men in resisting incursions of the savages," because many 
of the frontier settlements were composed largly of Presbyterians ; 
and between the Presbyterian and the Quaker there was bitter en- 
mity. With those Quakers the moral judgment was predominated 
by the idea that a religious enemy is worthy of any treatment. So 
the Quaker Assembly allowed the white Presbyterian to be scalped, 
his cabin burned, and his family murdered. This produced a 
movement bordering on insurrection and revolution against the 
then capital of Pennsylvania and its government, in which the reb- 
els burned and sacked villages, and committed manslaughter with- 
out discrimination; yet they cited Scripture which they claimed 
justified them, and "boasted of their act as one of proper retribu- 
tive and religious justice." 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

It is my firm conviction that the true history of cause and effect 
leading to the sentiment in the Korth touching slavery in the 
South, shows the actions based upon it to be of no higher nature 
than the many instances of misguided moral and religious actions 
with which histoiy is replete. Hence, — to gToup cause and effect in 
such a light as seems to me proper and natural so that this may be 
seen; to give what I believe to be the true history of the struggle 
in Kansas from tlie passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854 
down to 1861, — a struggle which, in its true relation to the Civil 
War, like the facts themselves, has never been fully presented or 
rightly appreciated ; to present tlie chief facts of the slavery history 
from the earliest times down to the Civil War in an argumentative 
essay of such a leng-th as will make it serviceable as a suggestive 
guide more especially to the younger students of my own native 
South; to present the real connection between Lincoln's election 
and Southern secession, — were the motives which prompted my writ- 
ing. If I shall succeed in awaking a desire in any mind which will 
lead to thorough investigation, I shall have accomplished my pur- 
pose. 

It readily will be observed that I do not attempt to make distinc- 
tions between Abolition, Free Soil, Liberty, or otlier anti-slavery 
party names. In my conviction, they are different names for tlie same 
thing. In a study of the purely local phases of the anti-slavery 
movement distinctions may properly be made. But I make no at- 
tempt to study parties; I give an outline of what I conceive to be 
a movement; diverse, it is true, in its components, heterogenous 
in its individuality, yet each had started from erroneous premises, 
and all had been guided to unity of purpose through deductions 
which did not follow. 

It has been necessary to leave unsaid much which might properly 
have been discussed, and this brevity possibly has lead to some ob- 
scurity of statement. The correctness of my conclusions must rest 
with the fair and impartial in judgment. As to my premises, the 
majority of authorities which I have given are readily obtainable, 
and even those out of print are to be found in the larger libraries, 
and so any quotation may be readily verified or any branch fully 
studied. I refer, in the greater number of instances, to writers 
who are Northern men and who wrote from a Northern standpoint. 



10 IXTRODUCTORY, 

Many able writers of the South have done nobly in their treatment 
of the period, the historical data of wliich I here review; I fully 
recognize my indebtedness to them; yet I have sought to prove my 
fundamental premises by evidence which cannot be suspected of 
prejudice in favor of the South. 

The method of presenting a subject has much to do with the 
impression left on the mind; and this is especially true of the for- 
mative period of youthful mental development. By mere manner 
of treatment the ti'uth concerning the bearing of slavery on the 
Civil War too often has been obscured. Many of our text-books 
by mere method of presentment sometimes leave the student under 
very erroneous impressigns. This fact, in view of the importance 
cf the subject, is a sufficient excuse for an honest effort to cooperate 
with those who are making faithful efforts to have the sons and 
daughters of the South understand that the valor of their fathers 
and the sacrifices of their noble mothers were expended in a cause 
the most honorable, and under circumstances where inactivit}^ and 
servile submission would have been most disgraceful to any Ameri- 
can similarly situated. 



Northern Rebellion and Soutnern 
Secession, 



THE FORMATION. 

Preliminary to this investigation and as briefly as is consistent 
with the purpose of this monograph, a survey of certain questions 
of American Constitutional history will be necessary. I^o matter 
how much discussed these old national landmarks, they must ever 
stand the only reliable guide posts to a correct study of later is- 
sues of national importance. In a court of history, similar to a 
court of legal justice, the inquiry is. What did the parties really 
agree to do, and in what respect has each kept or wherein has he 
failed to keep his stipulations and obligations ? This is essentially 
true in dealing with a nation's political history. 

That bold and spirited document which we call the Declaration 
of American Independence, signed July 4, 1776, was not intended 
to be a governmental agi-eement; and generally it has not been so 
regarded. Up to that pregnant event, each colony had been gov- 
erned in its own peculiar way, — each differing more or less from 
every other. The only thing politically in common, was tlie al- 
legiance each owed the one great head, the English Government. 
Even this was not the same in degree. In the Declaration it was 
asserted that "these United Colonies are and of right ought to be 
Free and Independent States," — united with but one object — tem- 
porarily, and in but one particular, and that was that each united 
with all others should keep up the fight until England should sur- 
render and acknowledge their freedom. 

Up to the time of the adoption of Richard Henry Lee's motion, 
the delegates assembled from and representing the various colo- 
nies, had been a congress praying the king to desist from certain 
things and to grant certain requests : in the Declaration they agreed 



12 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

unitedly to compel him to grant not the requests heretofore made, 
but more, to each of tlie thirteen political divisions separate free- 
dom and independence. 

Judge Thos. M. Cooley says, "At the opening of their struggle 
for Independence the American States had no common bond of 
union except such as exist in a common cause and common danger. 
I'hey were not yet a nation ; they were only a loose confederacy, and 
no compact or articles of agreement determined the duties of the 
several members to each other, or to the confederacy as an aggre- 
gate of all." 

Judson A. Landon, LL.D., for some time president of a leading 
New York college, in discussing the Declaration of Independence 
says, "The thought in the mind of the framers no doubt wate that 
every colony was free and independent of the king. There was no 
need to say independent of each other; they had always been so, 
and the idea of erecting a common, central government out of all, 
was not yet suggested,"^ 

An eminent scholar has sought toi perpetuate a different view of 
this period of our governmental evolution. He is perhaps the most 
extreme of his school. In his Constitutional History of the United 
States, Dr. H. von Hoist, a German writer who is extensively read 
in O'ur country, argues that the Declaration of Independence "did 
not create thirteen sovereign States," but that the "United States 
of America became from the fourth day of July, 1776, a sovereign 
State and a member of the family of nations, recognized by the 
law of nations."^ Von Hoist has a few followers in the United 
States who are men of some national reputation. James A, Gar- 
field, for instance, declares : "No one of the colonies was ever inde- 
pendent or sovereign."^ 

This view follows the theory advanced by a small minority of 
Americans after the Declaration; and is the same one which was 
presented with some vigor on up to and through the .convention 
which drafted the Constitution. Among the delegates themselves 
were a few who held this doctrine, of whom Alex. Hamilton, Wil- 
son, and Grerry were most uncompromising. They contended that 

iThe Const. Hist, and Gov. of the U. S., 59. 

^Vol. 1, 6-7. 

^Moore, The Am. Cong., 69. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 13 

the Declaration of Independence created a nation; that is, that 
when the colonies became independent of Great Britain they be- 
came independent States not ''individually but Unitedly."* But cer- 
tainly there is one thing with reference to the Declaration of In- 
dependence, as to which all agree, and that is tliat whatever gov- 
ernment or condition resulted, it came to pass by virtue of the will 
of the majority of the qualified citizenship of America; and hence 
it follows that whatever construction that majority put upon tlie 
Declaration of Independence and whatever changes they made 
thereafter, and whatever instruments they ordained in evidence of 
their will, must be taken as conclusive. If we carefully follow the 
expressions of the will of the people down to the adoption of the 
first Constitutional amendments, we cannot conclude that they 
meant to construe the Declaration of Independence as making one 
great single State out of the entire number of colonies. 

With certainty it can be affirmed that the first governmental 
union of America for any purposes other than the prosecution of 
the war, began jSTovember 15, 1777, when representatives from the 
entire number of colonies entered into an agreement called "Ar- 
ticles of Confederation." Up to this time delegates, in a volun- 
tary congressional capacity, had been struggling in a weak and 
indifferent way at Philadelphia to carry on the war against Eng- 
land. Congress, with no real authority other than the mere stress 
of temporary conditions, had legislated ; but any one of the several 
colonial legislatures, or governments, at any time could, so far as 
its own subjects were concerned, have annulled the congressional 
acts. Some of the colonial or State governments did utterly dis- 
regard the assumed authority of this congress. Before this time 
all the States had adopted republican governments, and to these 
respective governments the Articles of Confederation were referred, 
and by the State governments amended and returned to the so- 
called congress. The amended document was signed by the dele- 
gates of eight colonies, now some time acting as States, July 9, 
1778, and by the last and thirteenth, March, 1781. Where did the 
sovereignty and independence of the contracting States now lie? 
The document itself leaves no doubt: Art. II. savs, "Each State 



'House Docs., v. 112, No. 529 : Doc'y Hist. Const., v. 3, pp. 165, 244. 



14 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence/' — the first state- 
2nent after the Confederation had been given a name." 

Jealous of their separate independence, and to further empha- 
size their separate sovereignty, when the representatives of the late 
colonies met the peace agents of England in 1780, they required 
England to acknowledge the independence and sovereignty of each 
Stat-e by name — absolute independent sovereignty was given to 
each several State, and not to the Confederated or United States. 
Now in connection with this, notice in Art. 11. the word "retains" — 
not "has surrendered," as it must have been if Doctor von Hoist 
and his school are correct, — but "Each State retains" — what? tliat 
which it obtained from England : "its sovereignty, freedom and 
independence," — and not these only, but "and every Power, Ju- 
risdiction and right which is not by this confederation expressly 
delegated to the Unitied States, in Congress assembled." Plainer, 
stronger, more cogently clear language has never been written. 
We need give but one or two extracts to show that those who acted 
and lived under the Confederation understood that the separate 
States Avere distinct sovereignties each from every other. Pelatiah 
Webster, in 1784, after the Confederation had been in full opera- 
tion for three years, wrote: "The true end and design of our Con- 
federation I take to be this, viz. : To rmite the strength of the 
separate States under Congress as their general Head, and to dele- 
gate to them the direction of the operations of our military and 
naval forces, against the power of Great Britain. And this I take 
was the general sense and understanding of the States who adopted 
the articles of our federal union, and the whole tenor of the ar- 
ticles themselves supports this opinion. 

"The form of government planned by Congress, and adopted by 
the states, is the only form we could adopt under our circum- 
stances : And the honor and dignity of Congress, as a private citi- 
zen, I am determined to sitpport, as much as the sovereignty, free- 
dom and independence of the states "" 

President Monroe, who was in the full possession of his vigorous 
intellect during all the formative period, and who showed his wis- 



52 Woolsey, Pol. Sc. 24.3: also Frothingham, of Mass. (1890), The Rise of the 
Rep. of the V. S., 561. 

oMabel Hill. Liberty Documents, 217. To the same effect see Hamilton's Works. 



KOKTHERX REBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERiS: SECESSIOX. 15 

dom by securing to the country the vast Louisiana purchase, and 
wlio was admitted to be one of the purest and cleanest of men, 
spealving of the origin of American institutions, said that t^'o 
things are evident: "The first is, that in wresting the power, or 
what is called the sovereignty, from the crown, it passed directly to 
the people. The second, that it passed directly to the people of 
each colony, and not to the people of all the colonies in the aggre- 
gate^ — to thirteen distinct cohimunities, and not to one.'" 

Justice Chase, one of the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, in the case of Ware vs. Hylton (3 Dallas, 334) said, "I 
consider this a declaration, not that the united colonies, jointly, in 
a collective capacity, were inde]3endent states, &c., but that each 
of them was a sovereign and independent state, that is, that each of 
them had a right to govern itself by its own authority and its O'wn 
laws, without any control from any otlier power on earth.'' 

After living under the first governmental agreement. The Arti- 
cles of Confederation, for about nine years, on the 17th day of 
September, 1787, a body composed of tovty delegates, representing 
the thirteen States, "in order to form a more perfect Union," 
drew up a document which they called "The Constitution of the 
United States of America." Its last article provided that the "rati- 
fications of the conventions of nine states" must be had before 
this document should become the law, or become a new govern- 
mental contract to take the place of the then binding "Articles of 
Confederation." Let us not lose sight of the fact that the govern- 
ment imder the Confederation was "inadequate" — ^the most convinc- 
ing admission of its want of sovereign independence. It did not 
claim to have the power, and Congress made no attempt to coerce 
any individual State to comply with its mandates. Many of the 
States refused to pay their pro rata of the assessments against 
them by Congress and performed various individual acts of sover- 
eign independence. Among the acts which indicated a conscions- 
ness of independent sovereignty of the individual States, and that 
indicated the "Union" little more than a confederated league, was 
the sending of delegates who met at Annapolis September 11, 1786, 
when New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia "had, in substance, 
and nearly in the same terms," directed their representatives "to 



^Niles's Register, xxii. 366. 



3 6 XOIITIIEKX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

take into consideration the trade and Commerce of the United 
states, to consider how far an uniform System in their commercial 
intercourse and regulations might be necessary to their common 
i]iterests and permanent harmony, and to report to the several 
States, such ^n Act relative to this great Object, as when unani- 
mously ratified hij them [italics in original], would enable the 
L'nited States in Congress assembled effectually to provide for the 
same."' Delaware and New Jersey had given much the same in- 
structions. FrO'm start to finish the new Constitution purported 
to do no more than form a "closer union." 

If the sovereignty of a nation, the states in which had been de- 
pendencies with only the right to control certain local affairs, had 
been in esse as the American government at the time of the adop- 
tion of tlie Constitution, there would have been some synchronous 
ratification of this fundamental law by the whole people. The 
fact that the delegates who prepared the Constitution referred their 
action to the several States, and that the action of the States as 
individuals became final — the body which drew and recommended 
this document having finally adjourned before any State acted 
upon their recommendation, shows that each State was still the 
arbiter of its OM^n destiny.^ 

Hence the question which has been so variously and widely dis- 
cussed, is. What became of State sovereignty after the Constitution 
took the place of the old Confederation ? Under^ the Confederation, 
as we have seen, if English words means anything, if the early writ- 
ings of the fathers and the political history of our country mean any- 
thing in tlie world, the States most certainly reserved their freedom, 
sovereignty and independence;" in ratifying the Constitution did 
they forever surrender their sovereign independence? Or, did they 
agree that sovereignty should lie dormant until self-preservation or 
the protection of homes, kindred and property should demand its re- 
call? History, not theory, answers our questions. The interpre- 
tation of the instrimient, as Judge Cooley says, must take place 
in the light of the facts which preceded and led to it ; in the light 



8Doc. Hist. Const., I., 2. 

'See James Bryce's American Com. for an Englishman's view. 

i^Wilson, Division and Reunion, 45-6. 



NORTHEEX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 17 

of eonteniporaneoiis history, and of what was said hy the actors, 
and the ends they had in view."" 

Just as a lawyer prepares a contract between partiej*, and passes 
it to them as competent parties to read, come to a mutual under- 
standing as to its meaning, sign and deliver, thereby making it 
their contract, binding in no other respect than each mutually 
understood it; so, the document called the Constitution passes to 
the several States for their mutual interpretation and ratification 
in the light of their common understanding. Henoe we must read 
the Constitution in the light of the recorded statements made by 
these several sovereign parties, when they came to ratify or accept 
it, before we can correctly determine what the States understood 
they were doing, or what they meant to do. If all of them, under- 
stood the same thing touching any one point or question, and so 
recorded, or if any given interpretation made at the time of the 
formation of the Constitution was accepted by all, this record or 
history becomes the guide, and not merely this, but a part of the 
contract. Just^afe written statements, made at the time and by 
the parties, of the mutual understanding of the parties thereto, 
touching an instrument prepared by a lawyer, would be the in- 
terpretation whicli would be accepted in common judicial admin- 
istration, the lawyer's understanding of it having nothing what- 
ever to do with it; so are we to understand the utterances of the 
ratifying bodies of the several States in entering intO' a constitu- 
tional contract "in order to fomi a more perfect Union." In each 
case there was a meeting of the minds of the contracting parties, 
touching a lawful subject matter, based upon a sufficient and good 
consideration, found, in the national compact, in the happiness 
and better protection of each State; and their competency grew 
out of the fact that they acted under the Ai-ticles of Confederation, 
which guaranteed to them their independent sovereignty. I am 
aware that in the debates upon the Constitution it is often called 
the "organic law," and is sometimes so spoken of yet. Call it what 
we may, it must have had its beginning in an agreement. Prof. 
Joel Parker, formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
of 'New Hampshire, while professor of law in Harvard Law School, 
July, 1861, said that the Constitution "is not itself an agreement. 



iHist. Mich., 34C. 
2 



38 XORTIIERX REBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERX SECESSIOX. 

but is the result of an agreement.'"' In 1833 Webster said, "The 
Constitution of the United States, founded in or upon the consent 
of tlie people, may be said to rest on compact [coiwtract] or con- 
sent; but it is not itself the compact, but its result.'"' Very well, 
then, ivliai ivas the agreement oi' compact? What did each State 
agree should become of her sovereignty? We find our answer in 
the recorded words and the acts of the several State bodies at the 
time of the ratification of the Constitution. In the records of the 
constructive period we find the mutual imderstanding of tlie States 
on this point — i. e., the disposition of their respective sovereignty. 
The records of the ratifying conventions, and the unofiicial docu- 
ments, together with the language of the instrument itself, answer 
our question and put the matter beyond all theory; jurisprudence, 
constitutional law, common sense, know no other way to determine 
such a question. 

The several delegates who prepared the Constitution turned the 
document over to Congress which was sitting under the little power 
given by the Confederation. In the letter submitting to Congress 
this final agreement of the convention, that body said, "It is ob- 
A'iously impractical in the federal government of these States, to 
secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet pro- 
^'ide for the interest and safety of all: Individuals entering into 
society, must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest."" This 
shows that whatever had been the theories of a minority of the 
framing body, the final draft of the new governmental compact 
liad been reached upon the basis (1) that each State was an indi- 
vidiial sovereign voluntarily entering the new organization; 
(3) that as States they each gave — did not receive, but gave — ex- 
istence to and surrendered under certain conditions j)art of their 
sovereignty to the Federal Government. Follownng the new Con- 
stitution until it finally became the expression of the people, if we 
find that they agree that this is their status and that they so un- 
derstand the Constitution to declare, then, since the prime source 
of all sovereignty^ has spoken, all theories to the contrary are but 
idle tales. 



1=4 Amer. Const. Hist., 1T6. 

"3 Webster's Works, 468. 

"House Docs., v. Ill : Doc. Hist. Const., v. 2, p. 1. 



XORTHERX REBELLION AXD SOUTHERX SECESSIOX. 19 

Congress had no j)ower to act, and so the matter was referred to 
the several respective States. This of itself was an admission that 
the States were independent sovereigns associated merely in a 
league for their mutual protection and kindred interests, with 
power to come into the new governmental agreement, or forever 
remain independently out of it. Had any one or more of the States 
refused to have ratified the new instrument, after it had been rati- 
fied by the required number, no one could have insisted successfully 
that the new Union had a right to force the refusing State to Join 
the Constitutional Union. After nine States had ratified the Con- 
stitution, the Confederacy was null, void, dead, — any State not 
having ratified the Constitution remained a separate, sovereign, 
lone republic. 

The debates at the ratifying conventions are helpful only, it was 
the result of the debating, the ratification, wliich became the con- 
tract. Before the ratification, and for years after answered in the 
negative iSTorth and South, the paramount question was. Do we 
forever lose State sovereignty ? Or, Did the ratification of the sev- 
eral States leave their sovereignty merely dormant? to which for 
a great period the affirmative was the most general answer. I 
maintain that there were two things which the ratifying ordi- 
nances emphasized: (1) State sovereignty shall lie dormant; 
( 2 ) Conditions under which it may be used or recalled. 

Delaware was the first to ratify the Constitution and thus sig- 
nify her willingness to enter the new Union. No people believed 
more or practiced more the right of secession for cause than did 
the inhabitants of this' little republic. She had formerly been a 
member of the semi-republic founded by Penn. In 1691, the 
two lower counties of Pennsylvania became disgruntled at some 
act of the general assembly"' and Delaware seceded, — ^because she 
believed -that the interests of her people demanded secession. In 
1692 England interfered and reconsolidated Delaware with other 
IS'ew England colonies. Again in 1702 Delaware refused to accept 
the new frame of government which Penn had returned to estab- 
lish, and she insisted on a second secession. While she left no 
statement similar to other ratifjdng bodies in other Stat^, es- 
pecially in the light of her understanding of 'the rights of a peo- 

i^Ridpath. Hist. U. S.. 213. 



20 NOKTHEKN KEBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

pie to protect tlieir local interests, the fact that she finally came 
under the first of the amendments to the Constitution which 
were made by the request of those States which thought the in- 
strument in itself did not state as clearly as it should some points, 
not only makes her a party to the contract which became final on 
acceptance of the Constitution and first amendments, but leaves 
no reasonable doubt that she did not mean under all conditions 
forever to surrender her right to exercise independent sovereignty. 

Pennsylvania was the second state to ratify the Constitution and 
the first whose ratifying convention met. At the time she was the 
second State in the Confederacy in population; Philadelphia was 
sacred as the seat of the earliest Congress ; the Declaration of In- 
dependence had been proclaimed within her gates, and there the al- 
liance with France in 1778 had been ratified. The Articles of 
Confederation had been put into effect from within her limits; 
and sitting within her walls the convention had scarcely adjourned 
which drew the Constitution. Most of the people had kept in- 
formed as to the work of the late convention, and it was understood 
that a government of specifically enumerated powers was being 
formed. Wilson, the only member of the ratifying convention 
who had been a member of the framing convention — a man who 
"had read every publication of importance, on both sides of the 
question, that had appeared since the Constitution was published," 
and whose "legal historical knowledge was extensive and accu- 
rate,"" assured the delegates tliat the Constitution recognized that 
"the supreme power resides in the people," and that they could 
delegate a part, as they would in ratifying the Constitution, to the 
Federal government, while a part remained with the respective 
States, and that the delegated portion could be resumed at will. 
But he insisted that, "The great object now to be attended to, in- 
stead of disagreeing about who shall possess the supreme power, 
is, to consider whether the present arrangement is well calculated 
to promote and secure the tranquility and happiness of our com- 
mon country."" 

But a very respectable numl:>er of the delegates were not satisfied 
with Wilson's assurances, and felt that the instrument itself should 



"Curtis, Const. U. S.. p. 521. 
"Elliot, Debates, v. 2, 502. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 31 

be more specific. Accordingly a meeting of representatives from 
thirteen counties and the city of Philadelphia was convened Sep- 
tember 3, 1788, which, after deliberation, among othex things 
passed a resolution declaring that the Constitution shiO'uld be 
amended so as to expressly declare that "all the rights of sover- 
eignty which are not by the said Constitution expressly and plainly 
vested in the Congress, shall be deemed to remain with, and shall 
be exercised by, the several States in the Union, according to their 
respective constitutions.'''* 

When Massachusetts came to sign the gTeat ooanpact she thought 
that in future j^ears there might be some question as to her sover- 
eignty, she felt that there might a contingency arise jeopard'izing ' 
the right to protect her people as against the world or any pa,rt 
thereof, and so in no uncertain terms she put her interpretation of 
the Gonstitution upon record, and declared that that instrument 
must be amended, "First, That it be explicitly declared that all 
Powers not expressly delegated by the aforesaid Constitution are 
reserved to the several States to be by them exercised.'"" No State 
in the Union had a more jealous regard for her independent sover- 
eignty than did Massachusetts; constantly this is shown by the 
language of the members of her ratifying convention. For in- 
stance, Mr. Bodman reaffirmed that "the sovereignty of the States 
remains with them.'"" Tacitly and verbally this was accepted by 
the majority as the correct interpretation; and the "amendments 
and alterations" which she demanded, were declared necessary "to 
remove fears and quiet apprehensions of many of the good people 
of this Commonwealth and more effectually guard against an un- 
due administration of the Federal Government.'"' 

When New York came to ratify or accept the Constitution and 
thus enter the Union, she, too, was careful to leave no doubt as to 
'what she understood the contract to be. Especially was she care- 
ful to leave no doubt as to what she was doing with her sovereignty. 
Her people through their ratifying convention declared, "That the 
Powers of Government may be resumed by the People, whensoever 



"EUiot, V. 2, p. 545. 

"Ho. Doc, V. Ill : Doc. Hist. Const., v. 2, p. 94. 

2<>Blliot, Debates, v. 2, p. 60. 

=iHo. Docs. : lb., 93. 



23 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

it shall become necessary to their Happiness; that every Power, 
Jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly 
delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments 
of the Government thereof, remains to the People of tlie several 
States, or to their respective State Grovernments to whom they may 
have granted the same; And that those clauses in the said Consti- 
tution, which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise cer- 
tain Powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any powers 
not given by the said Constitution; but such clauses are to be con- 
strued either as exceptions to certain specified Powers, or as in- 
serted merely for greater caution."'" They also insisted that there 
must be no delay in the required amendments."' Their plain lan- 
guage equally with that of Massachusetts, uttered respectively at 
the time each was ratif}dng and interpreting the contract into 
which she was entering with the other States, shows most con- 
clusively that the central government which was being created 
was a confederation whose delegated powers came not from the 
whole people as one sovereign unit, but "from the people of the 
several States" each as distinct in its individuality as is Australia 
from Cuba. Hamilton, who had been a member of the convention 
which drafted the Constitution, and who in that convention had 
advocated the annihilation of the State governments,"* said, "The 
State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever 
give them an influence and ascendency over the national govern- 
ment, and will forever preclude the possibility of federal encroach- 
ments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the fed- 
eral head, is repugnant tO' every rule of political calculation.""' 
The sovereign commonwealth of Ehode Island meant to make as- 
surance doubly sure. Her declarations, and the relation she main- 
tained during the long interval betv\''een the dissolution of the Con- 
federacy, upon which she resumed undisputed control of all her 
sovereign powers, attested the original sovereign independence of 
each State; and her history helps us to see that when the nine 
States had ratified the Constitution, those remaining were absolved 



=2Ho. Docs., V. Ill : Doe. Hist. Const., v. 2, p. 101. 
=3Elliot, Debates, v. 2, 414. 
«Ho. Docs., V. Ill : No. 529, pp. 22, 129. 
=5Elliot, Debates, v. 2, 239. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 2'o 

from all allegiance to the others, and stood out as on the day Eng- 
land severally acknowledged their independence, sovereign repub- 
lics over which tliose States which had formed the Union had no 
jurisdiction. The conduct of Ehode Island led her legislature to 
feel the w^loiess of their single and unsupported position. In 
1789, "at the request and in behalf of the General Assembly," Sep- 
tember session, John Collins, the governor, transmitted "to the 
President, the Senate, and the House of Eepresentatives of the 
eleven United States of America," an offer to continue trade re- 
lations. They assured the United States of their "disposition to 
cultivate mutual harmony and friendly intercourse." They recog- 
nized their State "to be a handful," and said, we "stand, as it were 
alone." Speaking of not joining the Union, they said, "That we 
have not seen our way clear to do it, consistent with our ideas of 
the principles upon which we are embarked together, has also 
given pain to us; we have no do-ubt but that we might thereby 
avoid present difficulties, but we have apprehended future mischief. 
The people of this State, from its first settlement, have been ac- 
customed and strongly attached to a democratic form of G-overn- 
ment We are induced to hope that we shall not be alto- 
gether considered as foreigners, having no particular affinity or 
connection wdth the United States; but that trade and commerce, 
upon which the prosperity of this State much depends, will be pre- 
served as free and open between this and the United States, as our 
different situations, at present, can possibly admit."'' 

President Washington communicated this to the Senate, Sept. 
2(], 17S9, at the first session of the first Congress. Upon the of- 
ficial records the title of the transaction is, "Ehode Island desires 
to maintain friendly relations with the United States."" 

However, Ehode Island had waited and debated until rebellion 
grew rampant in her very midst. Providence and New Port se- 
ceded from the Commonwealth. These were the first acts of seces- 
sion after the American Independence. These local difficulties 
were finally adjusted, and the last of the original thirteen, on May 
29, 1790, she entered the American Constitutional Union. But first 
she said, We enter the Union with the understanding "That the 



25 Am. State Papers ; MiscL. v. 1, p. 10. 
"Ara. State Papers : MiscL. v. 1, p. 9. 



24 NORTIIEKX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

powers of government may be resumed by the people whenever it 
shall become necessary for their happiness : — That the rights of the 
States respectively, to nominate and appoint all State otTicers, and 
every other power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said 
Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States 
or to the departments of govcmm,ent thereof, remain to the peo- 
ple of the several States, or their respective State Governments to 
whom they may have granted the same/"' In other declarations 
she adopted the phraseology that had been used by New York. She 
pointed out that the language of the Constitution itself might, 
some day, be misconstrued, and hence she insisted that additions 
be made to it and specified that, "1st the United States shall guar- 
antee to each State its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and 
every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this Consti- 
tution expressly delegated to the United States.'"" 

New Hampshire felt a deep sense of danger from federal en- 
croachments, and set forth her views in language similar to that 
used by other New England States, affirming that "all powers not 
expressly and particularly Delegated by the aforesaid Constitu- 
tion are reserved to the several States to be by them exercised.'"" 

When, on June 25th, 1788, Virginia, by her representatives who 
exercised her sovereign power, in the premises, adopted a form of 
ratification and a Declaration of the Eights of the People, "and 
ordered the same to be transmitted and recommended to Congi-ess," 
she gave the other States and the world notice of her understand- 
ing of the Constitutional contract. Among other things she de- 
clared and made laiown that the powers granted the central gov- 
ernment might be resumed by her people "whenever the same shall 
be perverted to their injury or oppression and every power not 
granted remains with them and at their will." That it may fully 
be seen that by the words "may be resumed by them," she meant 
that the people of each State might resume sole and independent 
sovereignty when they respectively deemed that individual inter- 
ests demand such a step, I give the following which was one of the 
am-endments which Virginia said must be made before her ratifi- 



"Tlouse Docs., v. Ill, No. 529 : Doc. Hist. Const., v. 2, p. 311. 
=^11., 316. 
='»Ib., 142. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 25 

cati(5n would be binding upon her. She said that the words which 
she suggested, or others of the same import, must be added to the 
Constitution, to-wit: "That each State in the Union shall, EE- 
SPECTIVELY, retain every power, jurisdictiom and right which 
is not by this Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United 
States, or to the Departmemts of the Federal Gfovernment."^^ 
Similar declarations were made by several of the other States. No 
language could have been found more clearly to declare the inde- 
I)endent sovereignty of the respective States; and, though all were 
agreed upon the point, the Northern States were more emphatic, 
as will be noticed, that when necessary to their happiness, or that 
of any one — "respectively" — each for itself should receive back full 
control of all the powers of the most absolute sovereig-n. It must 
not be overlooked that these States ratified the Constitution in full 
faith that the Several suggested amendments would be made with- 
out delay, and that this was actually done in the first several amend- 
ments which are yet a part of our Constitution. As is often pointed 
out, especially by Southern writers,'^ it was believed and intended 
by all the contracting parties that these amendments most cer- 
tainly preserved to each State, to be by it exercised — necessarily 
by it exercised since such arbitrary exercise was the very backbone 
of State sovereignty — the right to take tvhatever and all steps the 
protection and preservation of its peace and happiness demanded. 

Nowhere did any State name her sovereignty as one of the 
granted or surrendered powers; and likewise several other powers 
and right had not been named as granted, and so all thought that 
the language of the Ninth Art. of the Amendments preserved to 
each State all that it had demanded when that amendment de- 
clared, "The powers not delegated" are "reserved to the' States, or 
the people" [of the respective States]. Had any one State alone, 
Bhode Island for instance, said, "The powers of government may 
be resumed by the people of the respective States whenever it may 
be necessary to their happiness," and nothing in the Constitution 
disputed this proposition, there could be no doubt that she reserved 
the right to resume absolute sovereignty; it remained a dormant 



siPulliam. The Constitutional Laws of Virginia. 39. 40. 45 ; Elliot, Debates, 

3. 

==Conf. Mil. Hist, v. 5, 32. 



26 XOKTHEliX ItEBELLION AND SUUTHEKX SECESSION. 

power to be awaked at her touch. She says she does not delegate 
her sovereignty to the United States, and when in the light of this 
fact and by her request the other States agree to the ISTinth and 
Tenth Amendments, it becomes clear that they had accepted Ehode 
Island's interpretation and understanding, which made the doc- 
trine therefore binding upon all. This would be true even if the 
other States had said notliing in their ratifying ordinances; but 
when from these ordinances themselves it is seen that the other 
States already held the same view, had the same desire, it is doubly 
clear that there was a meeting in mutual understanding of tlie 
minds of all the contracting parties, — ^thus filling every requisite 
of a contract of the highest t}'pe kno^vm to civilization."" 

We then see . that of the questions which each of the States 
thought were settled beyond doubt — and thought so nearly to the 
Civil War — the foremost was that the present Constitution did not 
ta,ke from any State its independent sovereignty, its light to ivith- 
draw from the Union at any time when the interests of the people 
of the State demanded such action. It must be remembered, it 
may be repeated, that independent sovereignty implied — means as 
its very essence, in fact — that the sovereign may decide for itself 
what is best and expedient. The conditions for the resumption of 
full and active authority' Avere not to be settled by a majority of 
States — each State understood that she alone was her own judge. 
I do not stop to discuss whether or not this was best. ISTor need I 
stop to say that, while all constitutions must be elastic and subject 
to progressive interpretation to meet unforeseen conditions, — ^no in- 
terp-etation can nullify a plain provision; more especially is this 
true when the object or condition was seen and recognized at the 
time the provision was made a part of the agreement, and which 
object or condition continued to exist at any given time. The de- 
bates and close votes in many of the States show clearly that not 
one of the thirteen would have ratified the Constitution, thus by so 
doing entering the present Union, had the people of any State 
thought they were getting into a compact from which they could 
not withdraw. During all this formative period of this Union the 

"See a clear statement of these doctrines made by Georgia in her protest 
against the tariff in 1828, in McDonald's Select Doc, 234 ; also see Wilson's 
Division and Reunion, 45-6. 



]SrORTHEK]Sr REBELLION" AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 37 

people of tlie several States placed themselves upon the position — 
then neither doubted- nor disputed by any State — that as States 
they were originally sovereign; that the Federal Government, or 
confederated Union, had nothing but what the States had given 
it or should thereafter give it; and the concessions made toi it they 
were careful to name, — the Ninth and Tenth Amendments bind- 
ing alike upon all, emphasizing this fact, — ^thus retaining to each 
State the legal and moral right to resume its sovereignty whenever 
tlie Union Government made a breach of its trust. 

Prom the very earliest cases which came before it involving a 
construction of the Constitution, the Supreme Court supported the 
views here re-stated. One of the earliest was the case of McCulloch 
vs. the State of Maryland,'* in which was involved the right of Mary- 
land to pass a law imposing a tax on the Banlc of the United States, 
Cliief-Justice Marshall del^'ered the unanimous opinion of the 
court. This opinion began by saying, "In the case now to be de- 
termined, the defendant, a sovereign State, denies the obligation 
of a law enacted by the legislature of the Union." This was in 
1819, and is interesting for many reasons; but as to the point be- 
fore us, it shows that the States were regarded as sovereign by the 
highest tribunal in the land, and that they so continued except as 
to so much O'f that original sovereign independence as they had 
voluntarily entrusted to the Union, — and that by the best la^vyers 
who were contemporaneous with the Constitution itself. The court 
points out clearly that originally the States were sole, independent 
sovereigns, and "that the powers of the [Federal] government are 
limited" ; and the court holds that so long as the Government pur- 
sues a legitimate end and "is within the scope of the Constitution 
and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to 
that end, which are not prohibited, but consistent with the letter 
and spirit of the Constitution, are constitutional." 



3-'4 Wheaton, 400. The opinion in this case is in part given in Hill's Liberty 
Documents, 312. 



11. . 

INSTANCES OF ASSERTED STATE 

SOVEREIGNTY. 

After the Constitution had been ratified and had supplanted the 
Articles of Confederation the first political parties were a result 
of divergent views of construction. The Democratic party, led 
by Thomas Jefferson, held that '^sovereignty could exist alone in 
its soiurce"; and tliat the people of the respective States were this 
source; and tliat the people could act only through conventional 
power; that the Federal Government was a municipality, the crea- 
ture of the people of the several State organizations ; that the Con- 
stitution had been established as the "guide, and standard, and 
rule of legislation, executive and judicial authority and functions." 
The Federal party, led by the elder Adams, admitted that the 
people of the States were the original source of sovereignty^, but 
contended that they had delegated that sovereignty to the Federal 
Government, and that under the Constitution Congress now had 
national sovereignty. Pursuant to the doctrine of the Federalists, 
the Alien and Sedition laws followed. These provoked the famous 
Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, in which Virginia re-stated 
the conditions under which her people entered the Union: "That 
the powers not delegated by the Constitution to the United States, 
nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved by it to the States 
or the people; and, therefore, the exercise of the powers not enum- 
erated in the grant by the United States is a usurpation of the au- 
thority of the States or of the people." 

The earliest rebellion against the United States was furnished 
by Pennsylvania.^ In 1791 the govermnent levied what was called 
an "excise" tax on liquors. The citizens of Pennsylvania were the 
most numerous and extensive distillers in the country. The tax 
interfered with the profits in the business, and this gave rise to 
what we know as the "Whiskey Insurrection." This concerted ac- 



s'Wilson, Division and Reunion, 46. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 29 

tioia of a large number of citizens furnishes us the first acts of nul- 
lification in the history of the American Union. It was no less 
important or authentic because not the act of a legislature; because 
an act in convention or en masse by a large body of people becomes 
as much a binding and representative act as is possible to have; it 
emanates from the highest source of governmental power. It was 
nullification enforced by rebellion against the lawful authority of 
the United States. From straggling acts of personal violence, such 
as catching a United States marshal while attempting to execute 
the offensive law, who then was branded on both cheeks with a red 
hot iron, tarred, feathered, and ordered to leave the country, the 
sedition grew in violence and proportions. "A numerous body re- 
peatedly attacked'^ the house of the United States inspector, and 
finally destroyed by fire the buildings and contents, "it being the 
avowed purpose" "to withstand by force the arms of the authori- 
ties of the United States ; and thereby to extort a repeal of the law 
of excise, and an alteration in the conduct of the government," so 
the President of the United States reported to Congress.'" "Crimes 
which reached the very existence of social order were perpetrated 
without control, and the friends of the government, abused" and 
"forced to yield to the treasonable fury of a small portion of the 
United States," so the original records go on to tell us; and thus 
was violated "the fundamental principles of our Conistitutiom 
which enjoins that the will of the majority shall prevail." United 
States troops were met and fought; the rebels robbed the United 
States mail and gathered seven thousand troops. A major-general 
was chosen, his troops were drilled, and the munitions of war gath- 
ered. Colonel Clark, one of the judges of Fayette county, was 
made president of what was called an "assembly ©f citizens," and 
Albert Gallatin was chosen secretary. The movement was pro- 
claimed an insurrection by the President of the United States and 
declared to be treason, 'iDeing overt acts of levying war against the 
United States," which were declared to extend to the "subversion 
equally of the just authority of the government and of the rights 
of individuals."" The insurrection grew to such proportions that 
a large part of the State was in rebellion for nearly four years, the 



5^Am. State Papers : Misc., I, 84. 
s^Am. State Papers; Misc., I, 85. 



30 NORTHERX EEBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

extent of which may l^e gathered from the fact that commission- 
ers were sent to inquire into the situation, who reported three coun- 
ties of the rebellions section which had eleven thousand insurrec- 
tionists, none of whom were under twenty-one years of age."" The 
movement was not suppressed until President Washington called 
for seventy-five thousand troops, and sent Governor Lee, of Vir- 
ginia, against the rebels. 

This movement attests the fact that no section of our coamtry 
believed more strongly than did the North that the Federal Gov- 
ernment could do no act which oppressed any considerable body of 
people in a State. These Pennsylvanians believed that in the peo'- 
ple of a State resided the right to determine when the laws of Con- 
gress became oppressive; and that when the Federal Government 
interpreted the Constitution that that body of people, whose in- 
terests were involved, wevo, the judges as to the correctness of the 
Federal position, except it was agTeed tacitly or otherwise, and un- 
derstood by the great majority in all the States, that the State, 
in her geographical limits as they were at the formation of the Con- 
stitution, or as they should thereafter be made by the State or States 
concerned, should be the political unit, the constitutional indi- 
vidual. 

There is no doubt tliat this tax was a hardship on those that it 
affected; yet the method of seeking relief was nullification, — it was 
even far more pronounced than was the much told nullification 
threatened in later years by South Carolina. It went much fur- 
ther than did South Carolina. Some of her people held a single 
convention, in which her nullification ordinance was pronounced; 
Pennsylvania not only issued pronunciamentoes by various and 
numerous gatherings no less authentic than the single one in South 
Carolina, but Pennsylvania backed her theories by armed resistance 
and protracted acts of violence and bold insurrection which in 
length of time approximated that of the Civil War. 

As Governor Wise long since has shown, by 1801 the Federal 
party was on its way to the political graveyard ; and the principles 
tacitly enunciated in the settlement of the difficulty produced by 
the North Carolina trans-Stone mountain subjects were not only 
no longer seriously called in question, but became the recognized 



2sib., 101. 



NOETHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 31 

rights of Americans. The present State of Tennessee "was ceded 
by North Carolina in a deed executed by her Senators under her 
laws in December, 1789, and was accepted by act of Congress April 
2, 1,790. .... The cession was forced upon North Carolina by acts 
of rebels to her jurisdiction, countenanced by Congress." 

Settlers in the then State of North Carolina west of the Stone 
mountain, complaining that they were not afforded due protection 
by the parent State, declared their independence, and set up 
against both State and Federal authority a sovereign of their own 
called the 'State of Franklin.' They organized a State govern- 
ment, with all the municipal departments. They practically nulli- 
fied in their limits both the laws of North Carolina and the Fed- 
eral Government. They established a currency of peltry, and the 
then Grovernor, G-eneral Sevier, complained that he was cheated 
grievously in the payment of his salary^ by having pu.t upon him 
opossum skins, with raccoon tails sewed on them. They contended 
that his story was absurd, because if they had the raccoon tails 
they would have the raccoon skins, too; but he convicted them of 
using the same tails for numerous different payments and of steal- 
ing the tails again for repayment. 

"The United States, under Washington's administration, did not 
deem it a duty or necessity to use force against this grotesque but 
flagrant rebellion, but compensated North Carolina and pacified 
the rebels by admitting the Territory or State of Franl<:lin into 
the Union as the State of Tennessee. But it must not be forgotten 
that by rebellion that State gained admission instead of losing its 
place in the Union; and secession and nullification were sanctioned 
by the then Congress of the United States of America. Such, then, 
was the jealous regard paid by all to the rights of independent self- 
government. And this, too, was a precedent sanctioned by both 
State and Federal authority, which fixed a habitude of thought and 
feeling and action on the very first settlers of this country, engraft- 
ing in them a ruling sense of the right of self-government against 
any power which either oppressed or failed to protect them. If 
it was not taught then by precedent sanctioned by Congress, its 
spirit was caught by them, assuredly by the colonies, especially 
from Massachusetts and all New England and Virginia."*"' 



s'Henry A. Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 19. 



32 X01!TI1EJ!N KEBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Secession and rebellion by sovereign States was first promul- 
gated by prominent Northern leaders of the Federal party in 
i803-'0i. There can be no doubt that from 1803 to perhaps 1814 
New England furnishes some of the boldest secession and rebellion 
projects having the least justification, which the histoiy of our 
country affords. While President of the United States it became 
necessary, in defending himself against attacks from his own sec- 
tion and party, for John Quincy Adams to give the world some 
startling facts concerning the disloyal tendencies of New England. 
Writing from Washington December 20, 1828, he says: "It was 
... in 1808 and 1809 that I mentioned the design of certain lead- 
ers of the Federal party to effect a dissolution of the Union and the 
establishment of a Northern confederacy. This design had been 
formed in the winter of 1803-'04, immediately after, and as a con- 
sequence of, the acquisition of Louisiana. Its justifying causes to 
tliose who entertained it were : That the annexation of Louisiana 
to the Union transcended the constitutional power of the govern- 
ment of the United States; that it formed, in fact, a new confed- 
eracy, to which the States united by the former compact, were not 
bound to adhere; that it was oppressive to the interests and de- 
structive to the infiuence of the Northern section of the confed- 
eracy, whose right and duty it was, therefore, to secede from the 
new body politic and to constitute one of their own. The plan was 
so far' matured that the proposal had been made to an individual 
to permit himself, at the proper time, to be placed at the head of 
the military movements which, it was foreseen, would be necessary 
for carrying it into execution."*" 

July 7, 1804, a distinguished Connecticut lawyer and judge 
wrote to a friend in Washington city : 'T have seen many of our 
friends, and all that I have seen and most that I have heard from 
believe that we must separate, and that this is the most favorable 
moment."" 

Alexander Hamilton, the distinguished New York politician and 
WTiter, on the day before his death, July 10, 1804, expressed hit 



<°Henry Adams. New England Federalism, 52-3. 
"lb., 342. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 33 

disapproval of dismemberment of the Union^ showing clearly that 
he knew of the existence of the plan.'" 

May 11, 1829, William Plnmer, member of the United States 
Senate*^ from New England, in a memorandum in his Life, says, 
"I recollect, and am certain, that . . . Mr. Hillhouse, after saying 
to me that New England had no influence in the government, 
added, in an animated tone, 'The Eastern States must, and will, 
dissolve the Union, and form a separate government of their own; 
and the sooner they do this the better.' I think the first man who 
mentioned the subject to me was Samuel Hunt, a Eepresentative 
from New Hampshire. He conversed with me often and long upon 
the subject. But there was noi man with w^hom I conversed so 
often, so fully and freely as with Eoger Griswold. He was, with- 
out doubt or hesitation, decidedly in favor of dissolving the Union 
and establishing a Northern /confederacy. Next to Griswold, Uriah 
Tracey conversed most freely and fully upon the subject. It was 
he who informed me that Gen. Hamilton had consented to attend 
a meeting of select Federalists in Boston in the autumn of 1804. 
... It was Tracey who informed me that the death of Hamilton 
had prevented the meeting in Boston; but he added, 'The plan of 
separation is not abandoned.' "" 

This is all the more startling, when we remember that these men 
were not only men of prominence, but at the time of their con- 
spiracy many of them were members of Congress. 

During the War of 1813 the United States Government, through 
the proper channel and acting under the Constitution, called for 
troops. This at once gave occasion for a fresh outburst of this re- 
bellious spirit. Not only was it confined to individuals, but it 
reached as well the highest officials of the New England States. 
Massachusetts refused to obey; Connecticut refused to send her 
citizens in response to the Federal call ; Ehode Island stood firm on 
her State-rights and reasserted her sovereignty. Each defied the 
Federal Government, and refused to rally to her flag ; each insisted 
that she was not bound to obey unless she felt it to the interests of 
the citizens of her State to do so. During this opposition to tiie 



"HamiUon's Works, v. 6, 56; HamiUon's Hist, of the Republic, v. 6, 
New Eng. Fed., 365. 
"New Eng.Fed., 146. 

"Adams. New Eng. Fed., 106 ; Life of Plnmer. 298. 
3 



3-i NOETHEUN EEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

United States in the War of 1812, "A large meeting in Boston de- 
•clared the act [an embargo on sliipping] arbitrary and unconsti- 
tutional, and tliat all who assisted in carrying out the law should 
be regarded as enemies of the State and as hostile to the liberties 
of the peojDle." "The Government of Massachusetts refused to sub- 
mit [to the demands of Congress], and the authorities of the latter 
State passed a law for raising a provisional army of two thousand 
for 'special State defense/ of which one of her own citizens was 
made commander.""' And ever ready to api>eal to religious convic- 
tions for support, the Massachusetts Legislature refused to extend 
a vote of thanlvs to Capt. Lawrence for the capture of tlie Peacock 
because that august body said "it was not becoming a moral and 
religious people" to approve the course of the United States at 
that time ! 

The burdens of the war fell heavily upon them, yet they did not 
have such a love for the United States, as a nation, as to be willing 
patiently to wait the rifting of the war cloud; they lou'dly pro- 
tested that the interests of the people of their several States were 
first, paramount, — and second and last, the national interests. They 
argued that they had entered the Union and had temporarily sus- 
pended their sovereign independence to facilitate State success, and 
that they had a right to determine when individual State happi- 
ness was jeopardized. In the Hartford Convention, which met in 
1814, Connecticut, Ehode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont 
were more or less largely represented. As a result of their delibera- 
tions, they came forth in what was called the EEPOET, in which, 
among other tilings, they made the following declaration : 

"In case of deliberate, dangerous, and palpable infractions of the 
Constitution, AFFECTING THE SOVEEEIGNTY OF A 
STATE AND THE LIBEETIES OF THE PEOPLE, it is not 
only tlie right, but the duty of such State to interpose its au- 
thority for protection in the manner best calculated to secure that 
end." And they declared that when cases arise which jeopardize 
the happiness and peace of the citizens, States "must be their own 
judges and execute their own- decisions."" 

This was reaffirming the position of all the States when each for 



"Am. State Papers : Misc., v. II. 
««Adams, New Eng. Fed., 297. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. OD 

herself ratified tlie Constitution; it was the doctrine incorporated 
in the Constitution, and was the poisition taken by Kentuclcy and 
A'irginia in the famous resolutions which the Alien and Sedition 
laws had excited. New England's position was nullification and 
more; it was secession, if secession should be necessary to protect 
"the liberties of the people," As a doctrine of that day, it cannot 
be criticised; but the justification of the position taken by these 
Northern people under the circumstances, and which led to the re- 
affirmation of what was originally regarded as the fundamental 
doctrine, is open to serious criticism and censure. 

Too many writers have sought to place the nullification of 
South Carolina, when "at a later day she opposed the tariff law, on 
a parity with the acts of the ISTorthern opponents of the War of 
1812. There is but one similar feature; neither resorted to arrned 
resistance; but as to an excuse for resorting to resistance, under 
the doctrine of State sovereignty, there is an important distinction. 
In the War of 1812 the question was a temporary and unavoidable 
hardship imposed in the interest O'f the entire nation rather than 
a few people of a few States; the enemy against which the Federal 
imposition was made was foreign and common. In the sectional 
tariff O'f 1828-'32 it was a matter as between citizens of different 
States, and where those of the one w^ere seriously oppressed and 
those of the other were granted a privilege -tO' meet an end which 
time and unhampered natural development would and should have 
been left to produce. Of the tariff law which led to South Caro- 
lina's attempted nullification Mr. Eoosevelt says, "They certainly 
had grounds for discontent; ... in the Federal Union it is most 
imwise to pass laws which shall benefit one part of the community 
to the hurt of another part, when the latter receives no compensa- 
tion."" 

In 1861 the Southern States, believing their several State inter- 
ests so demanded, took a stand against the same authority as did 
lilassachusetts, Connecticut, and Ehode Island in 1812, all be- 
lieving that they had entered the Union in order the better to pro- 
mote the happiness and general welfare of the people of each re- 
spective State fii-st and the nation second. 

In 1835 Michigan, then an unorganized territory, with a Federal 



*^Thos. H. Benton, 



36 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Governor, its awn representative Legislature, and with about 87,- 
000 inliabitants, determined to become a State. A State govern- 
ment was organized, and admission to the Union was asked. But 
there was a boundary dispute between the Territorj^ and a sister 
State, which must be settled before Congress could grant the peo- 
ple the privileges of Statehood on an equalit}'- with the other 
States. Her citizens did not take this view of the matter, how- 
ever. Acting entirely upon their OAvn motion, they elected State 
officers, refused allegiance to the Territorial officers, and, notwith- 
standing the President of the United States treated the new gov- 
ernment as seditious, "yet tliis State went on exercising the pow- 
ers of sovereigiity within the limits of federal jurisdiction, but not 
in the Union," says Judge Thomas M. Cooley, one of the most dis- 
tinguished lawyers of that State." The Territorial governor whom 
the President sent to administer the affairs of the yet legal Terri- 
tory, was scoffed, derided, and threatened until driven from the Ter- 
ritory ; and the pretended State courts and "State officers were recog- 
nized and supported by the people and in the undisturbed posses- 
sion of their offices" until the United States authorities were ren- 
dered official nonentities, the same writer informs us." And thus 
open rebellion continued until "by a species of fraud," perpetrated 
by a minority convention, the historians of that State tell us, which, 
though it claimed to be "the action of the people in their primary 
capacity,"'" held July 6, 1836, the difficulties purported to be settled. 
Congress at once seized this opportunity to avoid the armed conflict 
which impended, winked at the fraud, and admitted Michi- 
gan "upon a false assumption of facts,"" January 26, 1837. In 
concluding his notice of this exercise of State sovereignty by the 
people of Michigan when they believed the happiness and welfare 
of themselves as a political unit demanded and justified this dis- 
loyalty to the Federal Government, the learned Northern jurist 
and distinguished legal authority adds, "The people had main- 
fciined its honor in standing upon its rights."" 

Who were these people who thus stood upon the rights of a State 



"Hist. Mich., 222. 
«Ib., 221, 223. 
»»Ib., 223. 
"lb., 224. 
«Ib., 225. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 37 

to regard their local interests to the •unmistakable disloyalty to the 
sovereignty of the United States ? Most^ certainly they were not 
Southern people. Unquestionably they were not of Southern de- 
scent, nor were they Southern in their sympathy. The Michigan 
emgration was New England almost entirely, so far as the United 
States were concerned, and ISTew England ideas and sympathies 
predominated.^* 



^^Ib., 211, 240 et seq. See an interesting study of State sovereignty in Wiscon- 
sin In Amer. Hist. Asso. Report, 1891, 177. 



III. 
LEGAL STATUS OF SLAA^ERY. 

EARLY AGITATION. 

In this monograpli it will be necessary to examine the relation 
which slavery sustained to the Civil War. This will reveal the 
causes which led to secession. I have given Avhat I believe to be 
the relation existing between the several States and the Union of 
which they are members. It i's not necessary to show that the States 
under the Constitution possessed dormant sovereignty, or that they 
retained the right to resume absolute independent sovereignty at 
will, to justify the secession of 1861. The justification of South's 
part in the Civil War by no means depends upon sustaining the theory 
of State sovereignty or that of State's rights. While I am satisfied 
I have given the true history of the formative period, and that my 
interpretation of that history, following in it as I do many illus- 
trious historians and lawyers, is the correct one, yet it is not neces- 
sary to prove tliis position to justify the secession of the Southern 
States. To prove it only adds unneeded strength to a position 
equally impregnable with or without State sovereignty under the 
Constitution. However much any Constitution may declare itself 
eternal or forever indissoluble, or however dependent the members 
it holds together, its end must come when it ceases to answer the 
purpose of its creation. Some years prior to the war ]\Ir. Lincoln 
once defined this right which is paramount to all constitutions. 
While a member of Congress he said, ''Any people anywhere, being 
inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake 
off the existing government [or resist dangerous infractions ol the 
fundamental agreement] and form a new one that suits them bet- 
ter. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, — a right which 
we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right con- 
fined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government 
may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can 
may revolutionize and make their ovn of so much of the territory 
as they then inhabit." 



I 



NOETHERX KEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERX SECESSION. 39 

If a Constitution or governmental agreement sets out upon its 
face the conditions under which the members which it holds to- 
getlier may declare it at an end, such statement only lessens the re- 
sponsibility for action under this "most sacred right" of which Mr. 
Lincoln speaks. 

I am firmly convinced that the Southern people were not willing 
revolutionists. They certainly did no less than any other section in 
the formation of the Union; and most assuredly no section sur- 
passed in valor Southern arms whether upon the plains of Texas 
or fighting under the most distressing difficulties a treacherous, 
dangerous, and crafty enemy upon the shores of the Great Lakes.'' 
Southern blood bought for the nation, and especially for the Xorth, 
more territory than for the South herself. But whether revolutionists 
or secessionists, unless there was dire calamity impending them, 
which, in all reasonable probability, so far as they could see, remain- 
ing in the Union would not avert, then they were none other than 
unjustifiable rebels. The Southern people contended that the anti- 
slavery agitation produced conditions which necessitated secession. 
I'hey contended that the Constitution recog-nized the legality of 
slavery, and that, too, as a subject alone of State regulation. Since a 
rebel is one who renounces and resists the officers and laws of his gov- 
ernment wliile it is yet supported by a majority of the whole people 
and yet answers the purpose of its creation, and since the anti- 
slavery agitators renounced the Constitutional and Congressional 
recognition of slavery and made forcible resistance to the Federal 
government and its officer's who endeavored to enforce certain regular 
and Constitutional laws, the Soutliern people contend that these 
agitators were the rebels. They contend that this rebellion to laws 
and constitutional regulations, all yet then sanctioned by a ma- 
jority of the whole people of the Union, carried its efEorts to dis- 
affect the slaves, thus making the institution a dire and widespread 
and imminent source of danger to master and family; and by a 
widespread and almost constant encouragement of slaves to run 
away, caused financial loss to the master— all these, they claimed, 
produced a condition where secession offered the most honorable 
course of averting irretrievable calamity'. How much of truth there 
is in this no American can be indifferent to know. And hence, 



"Moore, The Northwest Tnder Three Flags 



40 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

however reiDulsive the subject of slavery may be, we cannot elimi- 
nate it from GUI' ante-bellum history. 

This seems an appropriate place to notice one or two of what tlie 
Southern people contend are the too oft-repeated, groundless posi- 
tions taken with reference to African slavery as a cause of the Civil 
War. We frequently hear something similar to Johnstone's state- 
ment: "Three things are necessary for the complete moral justifi- 
cation of the war : a righteous cause, a reasonable prospect of mili- 
tary success, and a certainty that success will secure a remedy for 
the wrongs complained of. The righteousness of the Confederate 
cause depended upon the righteousness of human slavery."" Such 
perverted statements, the South insists, are not only unkind and 
unbrotherly, not only misleading in history, but unjust to the 
brave Union soldier who risked liis life or perhaps laid it down 
upon one of the many gorj^ battlefields, because he believed the 
national government was tottering to its fall, and because, when he 
went to war, he was led to bqlieve that slavery would not be touched. 
N"o one questions that slavery played its part, a leading part, too, 
in the pre-bellum causes; but the South contends that the histori- 
cal truth. is that that part was the part of a tool with which design- 
ing men sought, with a very small comparative per cent, of indi- 
viduajl exceptions, to effect an end in which the condition or hap- 
piness of the slave had as little to do as a motive as if the slave had 
been a nonentity. The brave and generous Lincoln himself dared 
not risk the issue of war on the abolition of slavery ; no, not till the 
North had committed herself to the sanguinary fratricidal task; 
and then he asserted, and his party backed him in the assertion, 
that emancipation was not made because it was feither a legal or 
moral duty. Lincoln and the Union representatives in Congress 
took the ground that if the South conld be conquered with slavery 
existing, then the war should not touch slavery.. Writing in Aug- 
ust, 1862, Lincoln said, "My paramount object in this struggle is 
to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I 
could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it. What 
I do about slavery and tlie colored race I do because I believe it 
helps to save the Union.""' If the "righteousness of human slavery" 



^^Short Hist, of the Civil War. .'?3. 

5«Hart, Amer. Contemporary Hist.. Vol. IV.. 399. 



I 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 41 

had been involved, the very first duty of the Xorth would have de- 
manded the emancipation of the slav^, and every moment's delay 
would have involved multiple murder. Lincoln saw that while 
slavery existed it would be impossible to overcome the South. 
Hence, slave emancipation followed as an incident, — an accidental 
result, not an object, of the Civil War. It was Lincoln's last hope 
to strike a fatal blow before foreign intervention should make the 
Union cause forever hopeless. The North struck off slave shackles 
not because they loved negro freedom more, but defeat less. I am 
sure that I shall be pardoned for emphasizing this point ; I do so in 
the interests of history : I would not u.se one word that would cause 
a single harsh thought against our present North; it is of our com- 
mon country ; let Mason and Dixon line be a matter of history ; we 
have forgiven, but w^e should not forget. The numerous old and 
new unhistoric representations of the motives which moved thou- 
sands of intelligent, patriotic Southern people, led by the Le^, 
Davis, Beauregard, the Johnsons, Early, Longstreet, Stuart, Gor- 
don, Jackson — the list need grow no longer — show a spirit of in- 
trusive injustice. 

Let me now inquire for the status of slavery under the Consti- 
tution, and find whetheT it was a subject of the State or the JSTation. 

Let us reflect a moment. The benign influences of the teachings 
of Christ have done wonders for the world. The calm, gentle, ele- 
vating influence which pervades the sayings of the unostentatious 
ISTazarene is without a parallel in fact or imaginative creation. We 
of to-day stand in the radiance of its accumulating splendor; in- 
fi.del, agnostic, or believer, each orders his life and moulds his 
opinions froan a higher vantage ground than that occupied by our 
forefathers. It has taken nearly two thousand years to bring hu- 
manity thus far. We can understand no period in history, we can 
correctly weigh no action, until we see through the light of former 
years, and stand upon the ground occupied by those whose actions 
we have under consideration. This is no less true of the struggle 
incident to legal slavery in our country, in proportion to time, than 
of the struggle between the Britons and the Norman invaders 
nearly one thousand years ago. The closing curtain in the Ameri- 
can slave-drama fell nearly half a century since; the tragedy be- 
gan in the halls of Congress more than a century before our day. 



43 XOKTIIERN KEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

So, no matter what we might think of one who would advocate lui- 
man slarery in our time, we must not let that opinion prejudice 
our estimation of the various characters who play upon the one 
side or the other from 1798 to Lincoln's emancipation proclama- 
tion in 1862. The question for historj' is, At any given time what 
was actually done; and then, in estimating virtues and determining 
culpability, it is, As men and conditions were at any given time, 
vrhich of opposing courses most conserved the peace, happiness, and 
in the end redoimd to the greatest good, with the least possible in- 
cidental hardship, to the most considerable part highest in intel- 
lectual and social development ? Our treatment of the Indians and 
the almost unopposed American position toward the Chinese illus- 
trate my meaning. No one questions but what a Chinaman has 
more libert}^ and more opportunities in the United States, yet we 
generally leave him to suffer and consult the higher interests of the 
more advanced part of mankind. 

Throughout what I shall here have to say concernmg the rela- 
tion wliich negTO slavery sustained to the Civil AYar, some things, 
too often neglected or treated lightly, must not he forgotten. The 
first is that the Constitution, whose formation we so briefly no- 
ticed, left slavery subject to State control, except as to future im- 
portations or trade upon the high seas and inteTstate fugitive 
claims; and this relation was repeatedly declared by Congress. 
(2) In the next place, the Constitution and Congress recognized 
legal slaves as property, differing in no respect, so far as recogni- 
tion of money value was concerned, from other valuable chattels; 
this was repeatedly recognized at no inconsiderable intervals up to 
the Civil War by various Congressional laws and resolutions. It 
was declared to be a fundamental law by national treaties and en- 
forced by diplomatic negotiations generally managed by ISTorthern 
men. (3) Slavery agitation began in the North; the injustice and 
danger of one State or the indi^dduals thereof interfering with the 
slavery of another were repeatedly declared by Congress. 

1. State control of slavery and the relation it sustained to the 
Federal government. 

No one has ever questioned that Art. I., sec. 9, 1, of the Consti- 
tution refers to slavery, and that it authorizes Congress to prohi- 
bit the bringing of negroes for slavei-y to any part of tliis country. 



XORTHERN EEBELLION AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 43 

There can be no question tliat it recognizes slavery as legal, and 
antliorizee the Federal government to tax the import trade of ne- 
groes so long as it shall continue. Art. IV., sec. 2, 3, also recog- 
nizes the valid legality of negro slavery, and leaves it to the juris- 
diction of the respective States where it might exist ; and gives Con- 
gress no further or other jurisdiction or right over or concerning 
the slavery thus declared to exist, except to require any State to 
return to "the party to whom such service or labor may be due" 
any person fleeing from such "service or labor." 

By no means are we left to gather these conclusions from the lan- 
guage of the Constitution alone. At the very first session of Con- 
gress (March, IT 90) after the ratification of the Constitution, a 
memorial Avas presented by a Quaker society praying Congress to 
take jurisdiction of slavery. The House referred the petition to 
Foster, of ISTew Hampshire; G-ery, of Massachusetts; Huntington, 
of Connecticut; Lawrence, of Kew York; Sinnickson, of N"ew Jer- 
sey; Hartley, of Pennsylvania, and Parker, of Virginia. They 
recommended the following: "Resolved, That Congress has nO' au- 
thority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves or in the treat- 
ment of them in any of the States, it remaining with the several 
States alone to provide rules and regulations therein which hu- 
manity and true policy may require.""^ 

This resolution was passed without opposition. In a speech in 
the United States Senate in 1829 Daniel Webster, referring to this 
same resolution, said, "The fears of the South, whatever fears they 
might have entertained, were allayed and quieted by this early de- 
cision, and so remained till they were excited afresh without cause 
but for collateral and indirect purposes." Then complaining that 
the majority at the ISTorth had been improperly accused of desiring 
to interfere with slavery, he further said that nothing would induce 
him "to overstep the limits of Constitutional duty or to encroach 
on the rights of others. The domestic slavery- of the South," he 
continued, "I leave where I find it — in the hands of their own gov- 
ernments. It is their affair, not mine. Nor do I complain of the 
peculiar effect which the magnitude of that population [the slaves] 
has had in the distribution of power under this federal govern- 



5'Bentoii. Thirty Years' View. I.. 137 ; Annals of Cong., vol. 2, 1 sess. H. 
p. 1474 : Webster's Works, vol. 3, 280. 



4-i NOKTHERX EEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSIOX. 

nient, . . . nor would I coimtenaoice any movement to alter this ar- 
rangement of rejDresentation. It is the original bargain, the com- 
pact; let it stand. ... I go for the Constitution as it is, and for 
the Union as it is.'"' 

Concerning the establishment of a mixed international court to 
adjudicate cases against vessels alleged to be captured slavers, pro- 
posed by Lord Castlereigh on behalf of England in a treaty with 
the United States November 2, 1818, Secretary-of-State John 
Quincy Adams said, "The condition of the blacks being in this 
Union regulated by the municipal laws of the separate States, the 
Government of the United States can neither guarantee their 
libertv^ in the States where they could only be received as slaves 
nor control them in the States where thev would be recognized as 
free."" 

In 1838 we find the Senate solemnly passing the following decla- 
ration as to the status of slavery under the Constitution : "Eesolved, 
That an}^ attempt of Congress to abolish slavery in any territory 
of the United States in which it exists would create serious alarm 
and just apprehension in the States sustaining that domestic in- 
stitution, and would be a violation of good faith toward the inliabi- 
tants of any such territory who have been permitted to settle with 
and hold slaves therein ; and because whenever such territory shall be 
admitted into the Union as a State, the people thereof shall be en- 
titled to decide that question exclusively for themselves." On vote 
there were only ten of the entire number of Senators who opposed 
this declaration, and Senator Benton, who was not in sympathy 
with the institution of slavery, says, "The few who voted against" 
the resolution "did so for reasons wholly unconnected with" its 
merits."" They believed the Constitution was plain enough without 
any further declarations by Congress. Weljster. for instance, voted 
in the negative, but he took occasion again to declare that any in- 
termeddling with slaver}^ '%j a State or individual was contrary to 
the spirit of the confederacy, and was thereby illegal and unjust." 

Senator Seward, afterward !Mr. Lincoln's Secretary of State, 
upon the floor of the Senate before Lincoln's inauguration, said: 



"Webster's Works, III., 281 ; Benton, Thirty Years' View. I., 138. 
'9Am. St. Papers : F. R., IV., 400. 
'"Benton, Thirty Years' View, II., 137. 
«Ib. 



XORTHERN EEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 45 

"Experience in public afEairs has confirmed my opinion that do- 
mestic slavery existing in any State is wisely left by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, exclusively to the care and management 
and disposition of the States, and if it were in my power I would 
not alter the Constitution in this respect.""' ]\Iany such proofs 
might be given, but I shall content myself with but one more under 
this head. 

Thos. M. Cooley, LL. D., of Michigan, formerly one of the jus- 
tices of the supreme court of Michigan and professor of law in the 
University of Michigan, enjoys an enviable reputation as a jurist 
and legal historian. He is thoro'iighly anti-slavery in his senti- 
ments. In his history of Michigan he says, "It had been from the 
first agreed by all schools of constitutional construction that the 
federal government had no power over the institution of slavery in 
the States, except in the matter of the reclamation of fugitive 
slaves or perhaps as slaves became the subject of interstate com- 
merce. The States, by the Constitution, had been left to regulate 
their own domestic institutions in their own. way; that of master 
and servant as much as that of marriage."'^ 

3. The Constitution recognized negro slaves as propert}^ differ- 
ing in no essential from other valuable property. 

Under the old Confederation negroes were legal property, and 
the numerous negroes carried from the North by the British in the 
E evolutionary War — as many as three thousand having been car- 
ried fro'm New York at one time — were demanded by our govern- 
ment as the property of Aroerican citizens. In the Treaty of 1783 
it was stipulated that his "Britanic Majesty should, with all con- 
venient speed and without causing any destruction or carrying 
aAvay any negroes or otlier property of American inhabitants, with- 
draw all his armies," etc.'* Under this treaty negroes belonging to 
citizens of New Jersey were claimed as their property.'' 

In the War of 1812 the British removed a considerable number 
of slaves to Nova Scotia against the will of the o^vneTs. Others 



"Cudmore, Civil Gov. U. S., 119. 
s^Hist. Mich., 355. 

«*Am. State Papers : For'n Rela'ns, Vol. I., p. 190 ; John Quincy Adams' W'lis 
(Boston, 1850). Vol. III.. 336: IX.. 632. 
«5Am. State Papers : For'n Rel'ns, Vol. I., p. 191. 



46 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

were sold in the West Indies."" Tliese slaves were induced or forced 
to leave their masters because it was believed the loss thus sustained 
would reduce the jDower of resistance on the part of the Americans. 
In the treaty of peace, known to history as the Treaty of Ghent, 
in 1814, negotiated on behalf of America by Messrs. Adams, Eus- 
sell, and Gallatin, from Northern free States, and Clay and Bayard, 
from slave States, — these confiscated slaves were claimed as prop- 
erty," and the British Government was -required to pay for them. 
Payment Avas refused ; this led to a series of diplomatic correspond- 
ence"* until at length, in the convention with Great Britain on the 
question. May 20, 1820, in which "the United States claimed for their 
citizens, and as their private property" the removed slaves, nego- 
tiated by Albert Gallatin, Eichard Eush, Frederick Jolin Eobinson, 
and Henry Goolburn, plenipotentiaries, the question was agreed to 
be arbitrated before Emperor Alexander, Emperor of all the Eus- 
sias. This was done according to agreement."' The arbitration 
agTeements were carefully prepared, — Henry Middleton represent- 
ing the United Stated and Sir Charles Bagot representing Great 
Britain. Alexander held that the slaves which had been removed 
against their masters' wills were lawful and valuable property, and 
adjudged that Great Britain was liable in damages. At London 
in 1826, Gallatin representing the United States, and Huskisson 
and Addington Great Britain, it was agreed that this finding of the 
emperor was correct, and Great Britain promised to^ pay to the 
United States for the benefit of those who had owned these slaves 
one million two hundred and four thousand nine hundred and sixty 
dollars. The next year, 1827, Gallatin, .a Northern man, under the 
administration of Jolm Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, and with 
the approval of the administration, actually secured the payment 
of this sum.'" 

In 1830 the Comet and in 1834 the Encomium were carrying 
slaves from one port in the United States to another port in the 
same. Storms drove and stranded both near Nassau, New Provi- 
dence on the Bahama Islands. The slaves were removed bv the 



»8Am. St. Papers : F. R., v. 3, 750. 

»^Am. State Papers : For'n Rerns, Vol. IV., p. 106. 

6»Ib., 363. 

8" Am. State Papers : For'n Rel'ns, Vol. IV., 402, 645. 

'"Benton, Thirty Years' View, I., 90-91. 



NORTHERX EEBELLION AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION.. 47 

wreckers to the island; and detained by the local authorities with- 
out the consent of the masters or those in charge of the vessels. In 
1835 the Enterjorise, sailing from the District of Columbia destined 
for some Sooithern port of the United States "on a lawful voyage 
and with regular papers/' was forced by storm to put in at Port 
Hamilton, Bermuda Island. There her slaves were forcibly seized 
and detained by the local authorities. In each case the owners pro- 
tested in vain, after which they applied to our government for re- 
dress. Each of these islands at each respective time was under the 
jurisdiction of England. Our authorities demanded the value of 
the slaves of the British government. The claim was based upon 
the property alleged to exist in the negroes. "After years of nego- 
tiations with Great Britain redress was obtained in the two first 
cases — the full value of the slaves being paid to the United States 
to be paid to their o^miers."" England refused payment in the case 
of the negroes taken from the Enterprise, because she said slaver}^ 
was illegal in her territor}' — her emancipation law having taken ef- 
fect in the island of Bermuda before the time the slaves from the 
Enterprise were carried there. Hence, having touched free soil, she 
claimed they became free, and insisted that they no longer remained 
property. The matter was brought before the Senate, and in a se- 
ries of resolutions the Senate declared the slaves to be property, 
and that the property rights "as established by the laws of the State 
to which they belonged" were not. affected by their being upon Ber- 
muda Island free soil. Then the declaration continued tlius : "Ee- 
solved, That the brig Enterprise which was forced unavoidably by 
stress of weather into Port Hamilton, Bermuda Island, while on a 
lawful voyage on the high seas from one part of the Union to an- 
other, comes within tlie principles embraced in the foregoing reso- 
lutions, and that the seizure and detention of the negroes on board 
by the local authority of the island was an act in violation of the 
laws of nations and highly unjust to our own citizens to whom they 
belonged. """ Every member of the Senate voted for this plain decla- 
ration of a violation of tlie property rights pertaining to the 
slaves.'^ 



"Beaton, Thirty Years' View, II., p. 1S2. 
"lb., 182. 
"lb., 183. 



48 .NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

As late as March 9^ 1853, pursuant to act of Congress approved 
March 3, 1853, the grandson of Major William Hazzard Wiggs, "a 
gallant officer of the Eevolutionar}'- ^Yar," so the record tells us, was 
paid by the Treasurer of the United States $41,691.21 for the loss 
cf negro slave property sustained by the grandfather at the hands 
of the British during the Eevolution. The beneficiary claimed that 
there was due a larger sum which, he insisted, the correction of a 
clerical error would entitle him to receive. In 1860 the question as 
to this error came both before Congress and the Court of Claims. 
The question turned upon determining the measure which had been 
used by Congress to determine the value of the several slaves, and it 
was decided that the loss had been estimated upon the per capita 
valuation of a slave as previously determined by the legislature of 
South Carolina."" April, 1862, Congress, then composed of N"orth- 
ern Eepublicans, liberated the slaves in the District of Columbia 
by paying their owners one million dollars !" Lincoln, when a 
meml^er of Congress, had introduced a similar bill.'" So, from the 
Eevolution down to the Civil War, the valid legal property rights 
vested in negro slaves as those rights were declared by the local laws 
of the several States were not only never questioned, but had the 
most solemn sanction and acquiescence by all political parties and 
classes — North as well as South. 

3. The agitation of slavery began in the North. It began at the 
very time slavery was on the verge of dying from the entire coun- 
try. There was nothing to call for these early agitations, and by 
being synchronous with the beginnings of the underground railroad 
they defeated, rather than aided, emancipation. The early work of 
the underground movement will hereafter be fully shown. 

The earliest agitations came from the Northern Quakers, and not 
until the Civil War did this people forego this work. This same 
people, many of them the same individuals, had refused to cham- 
pion the cause of American freedom in the Eevolution, — a very few 
being the only important exceptions. John Adams, second Presi- 
dent of the United States, says the bulk of them opposed the cause 
of American freedom, and that when their representatives in the 



'*Repts. Committees, .36 Cong., 1 sess„ v., No. 471, pp. 1-1.5. 

"Cong. Globe. Apr., '62. 

"Bell, Letters and Addresses of Lincoln, 360. 



I 



NORTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 40 

colonial Congress "began to see that independence was approach- 
ing they started back," and listened to the advocates of freedom 
with "horror, terror, and detestation, strongly marked on their 
coimtenances.'"' Frequently they were spies against their own fel- 
low-citizens in favor of the English. Concerning some of this sect, 
Washington said, "I could by no means bring the Quakers to any 
terms. They chose rather to be whipped to death than to bear arms 
or lend us any assistance whatever upon the fort or [do] anything 
for self-defence.'""* 

The venerable Mclvean, of Philadelphia, estimated in 1814 that 
"Friends or Quakers, Monenists, and the Protestant Episcopa- 
lians, — whose clerg}'' received salaries" from the crown and other 
English sources, composed the bulk of American opposition to sepa- 
ration from England." 

Discussing their petitions for national interference with slavery 
in the States, a member of Congress said of them that "in time of 
war they would not defend their country from tlie enemy, and in 
time of peace they were interfering in the affairs of others."*" 

When Congress informed these petitionexs that the national gov- 
ernment had no power over slavery in the States, we can readily see 
how importunity of this class of men irritated and begot bitterness. 
So from this early beginning ponrs forth a stream of mad poison 
which finally drove thousands of Xorthem people to openly sanc- 
tion the wholesale murder of Southern slave-holders. Xo wonder 
"Washington called the prayer of these early petitioners to Congress 
"very mal apropos I"^'^ 

December 3, 1819, a convention held by citizens of Hartford and 
vicinity, in Massachusetts, 2>etitioned Congress to prohibit slavei-y 
in ^Missouri. The petition, long and galling, admitted, "The Union 
is indeed a compact of independent and sovereign States ; . . . this 
was, in fact, a bargain between the States as independent contract- 
ing parties,"*' referring to the Constitution and its recognition of 
slavery as a State institution. It admitted, "We well know that this 



"Works (Boston. IS.iO). v. 2. 407. 
"Spark's Writings of Wastiington. v. II., 160. 
"Jolm Adams" Works, v. X.. 87. 

*" Annals of Congress, v. I.. 1 sess.. Marcli 17, 1700. 14.5.3 et seq. for a full dis- 
cussion of these petitions. 

^'Spark's Wastiington, v. X.. p. .Sr>. 
*-Am. State Papers: Misc., II.. .■)72-4. 
4 



50 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

dreadful curse was entailed upon them [the Southern people], and 
that many of our own citizens have contributed to its continuaiLce." 
Yet it insisted upon "keeping the slave population of our country 
within the narrowest limits. If coercion be necessary, it can be 
most easily, promptly and successfully applied. ... If plans of 
gradual emancipation are to be adopted, they will be most efhca- 
ciously carried into effect."^ Coercion for the original Southern 
slave-holding States, emancipation for the slaves ! and both sug- 
gested by citizens of Massachusetts ! There was no indication that 
coercion — armed force — would be needed, yet it was thus threat- 
ened — and by those who admitted equal guilt. Thus the agitators 
began to pull down upon them Southern wrath. Nothing will make 
a man more combative than to talk of using force to compel him 
to stop doing what is in obedience to or by permission of valid law. 
Even before this petition the same Quakers who first petitioned 
Congress had, in Pennsylvania, entered the systematic theft of 
negro slave property from neighboring States^ — property protected 
by the Constitution and which Congress had plainly told them could 
not be touched by the national government or by citizens living in 
States other than the States where the institution of which they 
complained existed.'' So upon every hand these agitators showed 
not only arrogance, conceit, and a domineering attitude, but also 
exhibited a want of regard for law — unless that law happened to 
conform to their demands. 

That there was no cause for believing other than that slavery was 
rapidly passing from the American continent, especially during the 
years of these early agitations, I have elsewhere abundantly shown 
by the evidence of George Bancroft** and others, thus leaving no 
cause for these complaints. 

On December 22 of the same year another gathering of citizens 
at Newport, Ehode Island, petitioned Congress not to admit Mis- 
souri with slave concessions. The petitioneTs began by admitting, 
"That slavery, as it now exists in the United States, in the opinion 
of your memorialists, can never be made a matter of reproach to 
the existing Government or the present generation. It was an evil 



«3Am. State Papers : Misc., v. II., p. .574. 
**Am. State Papers : Misc., v. II.. p. 752. 
*'Am. State Papers : Misc., v. I., p. 12. 
8«Hist. of the U S., v. II., 275. 



NORTHEKN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 51 

introduced into the colomes by the parent State, and acquiesced 
in to a gi-eat degree by the colonies tliemselves in an age when the 
traffic in slaves was pursued by all nations without a suspicion of 
its enormity. The Northern colonies participated in it equally 
with the Southern/' they continue, "and tlie navigation of the New 
England ports and particularly of this town was employed con- 
tinually on the African coast in the transportation of slaves to the 
different American markets and by means of American capital. 
There can be no reproach, therefore, cast upon our Southern breth- 
ren for the introduction of this evil which, as your memorialists 
conceive, will not equally attach itself to ourselves and the English 
nation. We were all equally disposed to embark in the traffic, . . . 
and the guilt, if any there be, must be shared in an equal degree 
by the parties concerned.''^ They admitted "that the number of 
slaves introduced into the Union from foreign countries and in vio- 
lation of your laws must ever be inconsiderable," but they insist 
"that it would be unwise in Congress to permit the extension of 
slavery in tlie new States."^ They assign as a reason foT their un- 
-w-isdom that "its effect on the state of agriculture, the manufac- 
turing, and mechanical arts, and generally on the industrious and 
profitable habits of a people and their domestic peace""' is bad and 
generally injurious. And the only other reason assigned is that 
slaves will be increased in numbers. No intimation is made that 
this slavery is affecting the petitioners or their State. The}'- do not 
anticipate any appreciable harm from the import trade, and to se- 
cure the "domestic peace" of the Southern States and prevent what 
they allege will be an unlimited geographical spread of the increas- 
ing numbers, they interpose. The hifeto^ry of every Territory and 
State to the north of Missouri; the then existing non-slavery of 
northern Virginia and the experience of much of Kentucky refuted 
the intimation of unlimited territorial growth; and as for South- 
ern peace — it was too plainly but the clothing of the wolf — a mask 
beneath which subtle politicians paraded into Congress. 

But at length the Missouri question was settled; the so-called 
compromise clause had given to the North by far the greater bulk 



5^ Am. State Papers : Misc., v. II. 
ssib., 569. 
8»Ib., 569. 



62 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of the Union, and for more than thirty years thereafter the South 
rested quietly under tlie inequality. For many years there was no 
indication that the Southern people wonld gather about them tlie 
fair-minded men of the North and restore to its normal and con- 
stitutional basis the yet unorganized territory. More than ever the 
territories to be settled after Missouri were to draw their citizens 
from the older and previously existing States. They were to be 
filled with men already used to the ballot, — men whose rights as 
citizens of the United States had accrued to and vested in them 
before their emigration to a new home; and not until after they 
had moved, since it Avas a matter of formality of organizing a po- 
litical unit which would leave them yet citizens in no essential dif- 
ferent from their original citizenship, even if the Constitution had 
left a different course within Congressional discretion, no valid rea- 
son appeared for refusing to such citizens removed to new homes 
the same privileges which Ohio, Michigan, or Illinois, and all the 
States organized after the original thirteen, had been accorded. 
But during all these years of apparent contentment with tJie dispo- 
sition of tlie territorial question as settled in the Missouri legisla- 
tion the Northern abolitionists exhibited an increasing disregard 
for national laws, and in numerous instances showed contempt of 
the Constitution itself; and that officionsness which is no less dis- 
gusting when found in numbers than in an individual became in- 
tolerable, not to the South alone, but as well to the majority in 
the North. 

Concerning those petitions ponred out upon Congress after the 
Missouri question on down through 1837-'38 and well up to the 
time of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, it is well to let Thos. H. Benton, 
opposed to slavery himself, speak. He says, "There was but little 
in the state of the country at that time to excite' an anti-slavery 
feeling or to excuse these disturbing applications to Congress. 
There was no slave territory at that time but tliat of Florida. . . . 
The petitioners did not live in any territory, or State, or district 
subject to slavery. They felt none of the evils of which they com- 
plained ; were answerable for none of the supposed sin which they 
denounced ; were living under a general government which ac- 
knowledged propert.y in slaves, and had no right to disturb the 
rights of the owner; and they committed a cruelty upon the slave 



NOETHERN REBELLION AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 53 

by the additional rigors which their pernicious interference brought 
lipon him. 

"The subject of the petitions was disagreeable in itself; the lan- 
guage in which they were couched was offensive. . . . Many peti- 
tions were in the same words, bearing internal evidence of concert 
among their signers; many were signed by women whose proper 
sphere was far from the field of legislation; all united in a com- 
mon purpose which bespoke community of origin and the superin- 
tendence of a general direction."'" 



•"Thirty Years' View, v. II.. p. 134. 



IV. 
THE MISSOUKI COMPROMISE. 

OBJECTIONS TO IT ANALYZED. 

It was in 1819, when the Korth began to conclude that the posi- 
tion of slavery under the Constitution could be made to mean very 
much in national politics. Since it was the organization of the 
territory now occupied by Missouri which gave opportunity for this 
political attack upon the existence of the slavery of the Southern 
States, it will be well to begin with that occasion and see exactly 
what the issue was and from what quarter it came. 

I am satisfied that the advent of the slavery question as a national 
political factor is too often regarded or treated as the commence- 
ment of the JSTorthem agitation on the one hand, and as the date 
which marked the elimination from the South of the tendency and 
effoxt to find a safe means for each State to emancipate her own 
slaves. Either conclusion must be carefully avoided. I have else- 
where shown that not until ten or fifteen years after the fierce 
wrangle over Missouri's slavery rights and privileges did the South- 
ern States abandon an attitude toward their slaves which unques- 
tionably would, unimpeded by ext^nal forces, have resulted in 
emancipation. I have called attention to the persistent annoyance 
of Congress by anti-slavery petitions, — petitions unwarranted by 
the existing conditions, arid- which came at a time when they had 
no possible excuse or justification, — to show that long prior to the 
fight over Missouri the' ISTorth had commenced and steadily per- 
sisted in harassing the country by insisting that the demands — 
rather their demands for them — of an admittedly inferior and shift- 
less people were paramount to the rights of the incomparably higher 
class among whom the inferiors lived. Then in other places I have 
shown that long before the agitation of slavery as a political fac- 
tor, such unlawful practices as the underground railroad and wide- 
spread visitations of unscrupulous emissaries had begun their re- 
lentless goading which really had miore to do' with the ultimate 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 55 

position of the South than had the purely political phase of the 
anti-slavery outburst. 

However, the significance of that political legislation which we 
comprehensively include under the common expression "Missouri 
Compromise/' lies in its connection with the after repeal in 1854 of 
so much of that legislation of the Compromise as sought to restrict 
the territorial spread of slavery, which the North claimed forever 
prohibited any State or territory thereafter erected north of 36° 30' 
from settling its own domestic and local slavery questions. 

In 1819 there were t^\"enty-two States; ten of these had made 
laws for the gradual abolition of slavery, the undoubted result of 
■svhich was to send the slaves, in a few instances south, for sale, in 
most cases out of the United States. Even at that time in some 
ISTorthern States the laws for the gradual abolition of slavery had 
not yet wholly extinguished that institution. In New York, for 
example, slavery did not become extinct before 1827, and only chil- 
dren born of slaves after 1804 were emancipated in New Jersey in 
1830; living slaves in that State at the time of the passage of the 
emancipation act were never freed. Ehode Island, too, only eman- 
cipated those to be bom after a specified date, — facts which always 
strike the South peculiarly since the condition of the^ slave was al- 
ways made second to the financial interests of "the Northern mas- 
ters. '''' 

As society and industrial development were in the ante-bellum 
days, in slave commlfcities there was but one possibly profitable 
branch of industr}- — agriculture. So that in 1819 the agricultural 
States were the slave-holding States, in wliich emancipation had 
as yet had no legislative beginning, and these were equally balanced 
by the number of those where slavery was dying or for economic rea- 
sons had entirely disappeared. These economic and industrial dis- 
tinctions were the basis for the political division, and hence the po- 
litical power in the Senate was equally divided. Up to 1819 the 
phenomenal territorial growth of this country had hardly been a 
dream. But when the territory of Missouri came to ask for admis- 
sion it was at once seen that, it being a soil and climate mostly in- 
viting to agriculture, the political equilibrium of Congress was 
threatened. 

In the usual way a bill was introduced in Congress for the recog- 



^■'b XORTIIERX IJEBELI.IOX AND SOUTHERX SECESSIOX'. 

nition of ^Missouri as a member of the Union. Tallmadge, of Xew 
York, offered an amendment which provided for prohibiting tlie 
further introduction of slaves and also emancipating at tlie age o£ 
twenty-five all slave children thereafter bom in the new State. It 
must "be remembered that the territory had 10,000 negro slaves." 
I ha.ve elsewhere discussed their origin and the laws which liad fos- 
tered their increase. This proposed amendment immediately raised 
a question both of fairness and Constitutionality. Unlike the 
P'rench slaveholders of the Xortliwest Territory at the time of the 
passage of the Ordinance of 1787, many slaveholder's in the ]Missouri 
Territory had gone from the States, and were both used to local self- 
government and competent for its exercise. All of the slavehold- 
ers who came to the United States with the territorj' from which 
Missouri was taken, had their slaves secured to them by treat}- to 
which the United States was an informed and willing party."" Tall- 
madge and his coadjutors made a great parade of the evil of slavery, 
both real and imaginar}^ all of which, while it had no real connec- 
tion with the issue, only served to arouse sympathy by a blind recog- 
nition of inferior interests and neglected the fact that these were 
in direct conflict with superior. Xo considerable number denied 
the evil of slavery; in fact, as Lucien Carr says, on that point the 
South went further than the North. To' get rid of it and avoid i 
greater evil was the point. Xo one then suspected the continuance 
of the importation of slaves from foreign countries. As Samuel 
A. Foot, a representative from Connecticut, said, "The Missouri 
question did not involve the question of freedom or slavery, but 
merely ivhether slaves now in tlie country might he permitted to 
reside in the proposed new State; and whether Congress or Mis- 
souri possessed the power to decide/' Tlie Territory, or District, 
of Maine was about ready to ask for admission as a State ; her Con- 
stitution made no discrimination except as to paupers and Indians 
not taxed. It was well understood that her geographical position 
had decreed her a non-slave-holding State. For years a District in 
Massachusetts, it was well understood that with reference to na- 
tional questions the parent State had molded her politics. Maine 
determined the qualifications for her citizenship, and decided the 



"'Rhodes. Hist, of tho V. S.. v. I., p. .30, 
»=U. S. Charters and ronstitutlons 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 57 

legal status of her people. People of Maine or those of other 
Northern States would not have admitted the power of Congress to 
make her recognize slavery as a condition precedent to her admis- 
sion. Indeed, they would correctly have argued, no such power ex- 
isted witli Congress simply because the Constitution had left the 
slavery question outside of Congressio^nal jurisdiction. Jurisdiction 
to prohibit slavery in a State irrespective of its will must have im- 
plied equal power to create slavery under the same conditions. 
Then, in all the Territories erected ou.t of the Northwest Territory, 
and no less in the attitude toward Maine, Congress had set a pre- 
cedent ])y allowing each cither to recognize or prohibit slavery as 
0. majority of the people in each locality demanded (see* infra), 
and finally to make such a constitutional disposition of it as each 
State, iinimpeded by Congressional interference, had deemed it 
wise. Like privileges "in all respects whatsoever" was Missouri's 
demand under the Constitution. 

It is sing-ular that not a single argument which Ehodes"'' says was 
advanced foT the support of the conditioning amendment was 
tenable. (1) The restriction imposed by the Ordinance of 1787 
as construed under the Constitiition did not amount to a condition 
precedent to the admission of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; (3) the 
ainiendment did violate the treaty ^nth France;"* (3) the question 
of moral evil was wholly irrelevant, as much so as the right or 
wrong of selling liquor would be in a trial under an indictment 
against one for selling without a license. 

On the question put before Congress as to whether or not the 
amendment should be sustained and the State restricted against 
her will, all the Southern votes were in the negative, and by the aid 
of one Senator from Massachusetts, one from Pennsylvania, two 
from Illinois, and the two from Delaware it was defeated in the 
Senate, — the vote standing sixteen for restriction and twenty-two 
against it.'' At the next session of Congress, 1820, the compro- 
mise feature, as it is called, appeared. Senator Thomas, of Illinois, 
introduced a kind of addendum to the Missoiiri bill providing for 
the prohibition of slavery outside of Missouri and in the Louisiana 



osHist. of the U. S.. v. I., p. 31. 

^Lucien Cam Hist, of Mo., p. 144 ; Benton's Abridgement, v. XIII., p. 33. 

'^Rhodes' Hist, of the U. S., v. I., p. 32. 



53 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

purchase and north of 3G° 30'. x\s is well known, this measure 
was adopted. 

But the adoption of this provision did not admit Missouri to 
statehood. Within the territory itself the agitation which had 
filled tlie nation had not been without its fruits. Already the neces- 
sity for the Soutlfs taking defensive steps had begun to appear. 
In her Constitution Missouri forbade her legislature to interfere 
with slavery. ISTot'odthstanding the compromise feature, as it is 
commonly termed, had already passed, yet much opposition was 
found to the admission of Missouri under her constitution with 
its negro provisions. For several reasons it is important to know 
what produced her constitutional attitude both towards slavery and 
free negroes. Thos. H. Benton, strongly anti-slavery, who was 
Missouri's Senator for thirty years, says, "This prohibition . . . was 
the effect of the Missouri controversy and of foreign interference, 
and was adopted for the sake of peace, for the sake of internal tran- 
quility." He tells us that it was at his instance that the prohibi- 
tions in the constitution were placed there, and that he was "equally 
opposed to agitation and slavery extension.'"" There was another 
clause, the first of its kind in a Southern constitution, though 
Massachusetts had already set a legislative precedent, to which 
Northern Congressmen professed to find serious objections, and 
that was the provision "authorizing the legislature to prohibit the 
emigration of free people of color into the State." Finally the ob- 
jection was surmounted — an objection which "was only a mask to 
the real cause of the opposition and since shown toi be so by the 
facility with which many States, then voting in a body against the 
admission of Missouri on that account," for years thereafter ex- 
cluded "the whole class of free colored emigrant population from 
their borders, and without question, by statute, or by constitutional 
amendment."" Pausing a moment to look back from the initial of 
Southern prohibition against free negroes, we find that already 
precedents had been set by the State of Ohio, ISTorthern throughout 
her history, by Indiana, and Illinois — a prohibition necessary in 
IMissouri to secure internal tranquility and to avoid a dangerous 
element of foreign interference. 



»«Thirty Years' View, v. I., p. 
"Hb., 10. 



NOETHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 59 

In 1854 we see the entire country gathered in mortal combat 
either actually or in sympathy with the one side or the other on the 
plains of Kansas. How came them there, involves a study of the 
repeal of the prohibitive addendum in the Missouri bill. In thett 
year Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, introduced a bill for the or- 
ganization of a Territory from western lands then yet inhabited 
by the Indians. After some amendment and delay tlie bill provided 
for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, 
and is, therefore, known as the Kansas-Nebraska bill. This bill re- 
pealed the clause — the addendum — in the Missouri admission bill, 
which had prohibited slavery so long as it should remain Territory in 
that part of the country covered by the Louisiana purchase north of 
36° 30'. The repealing bill itself gives reasons for this action, (1) be- 
cause such prohibition was contrary to the ideas of fairness held by a 
majority in the Congress of 1850; and (2) because it was "the true 
intent and meaning of the act not to legislate slavery into any 
State or Territory or exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institu- 
tions in their own way subject only to the Constitution of the 
United States." It also provided that when this Territory came to 
ask admission to the Union as a State or States it sho^rdd be re- 
ceived with or "without slavery as their constitutions may provide." 
This was exactly what every State in the JSTorth and California on 
the Pacific had done for herself and according to her own views, 
and each had passed such laws on slavery as her interest had dic- 
tated, — in all respects former new States and Territories had regu- 
lated their own domestic matters, and it was thought but right that 
the same privileges be accorded to any other States yet to become 
a part of this Union. The bill became a law; and since, in the 
words of a former President of the United States, its fairness 
"could not be withstood on its merits,""" so it was made the oppor- 
tunity for one of the greatest political strategic moves in the his- 
tory of our country. To fully appreciate the significance of this 
movement we must look carefully to the Constitutionality of the 
repeal, its fairness, and propriety. The objections to the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill and the methods for defeating its normal results give 
us the key to the Northern motives and intentions. 



^^Appendix Congresfional Globe. 34 Cong., p. 



GO NOHTHERN KEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

The Constitutionality of the Kansas-Nebraska bill camiot be 
seriously questioned. It was in full accord, and so recognized by 
the majority in two different Congresses; with the principles upon 
which the States ratified the Constitution. When the bill was pend- 
ing before Congress, Mr. Douglas, who has the credit for being its 
most active advocate, voiced the sentiment of by far the greater 
majority of the whole people of the Union when he said, "It is due 
the South; it is due the Constitution.""'' Nevertheless, the aboli- 
tion element in the North set up a loud protest. They burned in 
effigy Douglas and other Northern representatives who, "truer to 
the Constitution than to tlie prejudices of their constituents," voted 
for the bill, and renewed with increased energy their unholy cru- 
sade. Aside from the false position of moral duty which I have 
mentioned, they justified themselves upon three grounds: (1) The 
reopening of the Territory to tlie normal conditions of setflement 
was alleged to be "bad faith" or "violated contract." (2) Slavery, 
tliey claimed, would now grow so powerful, that is, the agricultural 
States would so increaise, that its political power would never again 
be overcome; and (3) that it would be the cause of re-legalizing 
African slave importations and increase the import trade. 

These objections deserve examination in detail. 

1. "Bad faith and violated contract." There was no foundation 
v.-hatever for this charge. The addendum to the Missouri admission 
bill, which imposed conditions on United States territory north of 
36° 30', was a mere act of Congress, and neither before nor since 
has the right of Congress to repeal a former act ever been ques- 
tioned. Such things are done at eyery session. As quoted by Mr. 
Eobinson, Congressman Meacham, of Vermont, said, "I look at 
that compromise as a contract, a thing done for a consideration, 
and that the parties to that contract are bound in honor to execute 
it in good faith." Mr. Thayer, of Massachusetts, says that the 
South overthrew a "time-honored compact, and subjected herself to 
a charge of bad faitli." Mr. Robinson says, "The free-soil men were 
roused with fresh zeal" and determined to "demand reparation for 
this bad faith.""" The words "violated contract," "broken compro- 
mise," "bad faith," etc., furnished texts from which some Northern 



'"Spring, Hist, of Kansas, p- 3. 
lo^Kansas Conflict, p. 20. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 61 

Congi-essmen contrived to fill considerable space in the Congres- 
sional Globe. Mr. Goodrich, of Massachusetts, and others of his 
contemporaries, lost no chance to vociferate from these texts. Mr. 
Phillips, of x\labama, and some of his able contemporaries at the 
time fully met these false alarms. As pointed ont by Southern 
representatives in 1854, those of the Northen people who were op- 
posed to the Missouri admission bill and its prohibitive addendum 
never did accept either it or its conditions or acquiesce in their pas- 
sage."' The opponents to the settlement of the Missouri question 
never ceased to heap popular insults and indignities upon those 
who voted for that settlment. Henee it was never accepted by its 
opponents as binding, and so failed in the essential of mutuality be- 
tAveen contracting parties; and since it had no contract nature, it 
Mas no more than the merest legislative enactment. But the truth 
about the matter is that the Northern people, in the main, repudi- 
ated what we call the Missouri Compromise until in its repeal they 
saw what they thought threatened their political power. When in 
1820 the Missouri measures became law, the ISTorth cried out in pro- 
test; when in 1854 the prohibitive measure was repealed, they again 
cried for "the flesh pots of Egypt." 

During all these protests the South could not help but feel that 
the inconsistency of the Northern position was without a parallel. 
As I have said, the slavery recognition in the Constitution was, like 
all national compacts and practically like all legislation, a compro- 
mise as much so as the settlement of the Missouri question. But 
more, the Constitution was not a legislative enactment. In the con- 
vention which framed the Constitution, with one single exception, 
all the States represented were slaveholding. Some of the States 
said plainly that if some recognition of slavery was not made they 
would never ratify the Constitution; would remain out of the new 
Union, which would have left them free, sovereign and separate re- 
])ul)lies. The Constitutional recognition of the legal existence of 
slavery in the States was, therefore, made to secure the cooperation 
of all the States, because a refusal of any one State to join the new 
Union was recognized to portend danger to the new Union Eepub- 
lic. Upon the strength of this compromise Congress passed laws. 



"ijas. K. Hosmer, Vh. D., LL.D. (Minn.), A Short Hist, of the Miss. Valley, 
p. 166. 



62 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

The South contended that it was the greater breach of faith or vio- 
lation of compromise to nullify laws passed and reaffirmed by Con- 
gress pursuant to the great original compromise, than the legiti- 
mate repeal of past legislation. Sec. 3, Article lY., of the Consti- 
tution of the United States says, "ISTo person held to service or labor 
in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, 
in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from 
such service or labor, but shall be delivered upon claim of the party 
to whom such service or labor may be due.^' No one has ever ques- 
tioned that this a]3plies to runaway (or enticed away) slaves. At 
the time it became the organic law of the land its moral right or 
validity was not questioned. But afterward certain Northern States 
took it upon themselves to be the moral arbiters of American legis- 
lation, and ten States — ten legislative bodies sworn to pass no law 
in conflict with the Constitution, — passed State enactments which 
nullified what they had sworn to revere. This was the moral di- 
lemma of the North before the repeal of the so-called Missouri Com- 
promise, — before Congress gave the people of Kansas the right to 
decide for themselves what their attitude upon domestic servitude 
should be. 

The editorial introduction to "A Pereonal Liberty Act (1855)" 
by A. B. Hart, Harvard University, as contained in his historical 
handbook, is liable to mislead. He says, "This statute is a fair sam- 
ple of those passed by nine other States in the North. They were 
not caused by the Fugitive Slave Law itself so much as by the Kan- 
sas-Nebraska Act.""'' "They were" caused by the Fugitive .Slave 
Law, or were as much without excuse as they were without justifi- 
cation — either horn of the dilemma leaves them nullification of Fed- 
eral laws. The Act which Prof. Hart gives is itself only a stronger 
form of a similar Act passed in 1843 — eleven years prior to the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act. For twenty years nullification of the na- 
tional slave laws . had been in one form or another attempted by 
Northern States f^ and from Iowa to Maine legislatures and rebel- 
lious mass-meetings, before the Kansas-Nebraska bill, had echoed 
such sentiments concerning the United States law of 1850 as, "Dis- 
obedience to the enactment is obedience to God" ; or, "Any man who 



^°=Am. Hist. Told by Contemporaries. IV., p. 03. 
"^Wilson, Division and Reunion, p. 20S. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 



63 



in any way aids in tlie execution of tins laAv should be regarded as 
false to God and totally unfit for civilized society.'""* 

So it is seen that the cry of "bad faith/' or "broken contract," is 
a hollow emptiness. The abolition element for political gain had 
seized upon slavery as the cudgel with which to fight its way to po- 
litical control, and the cry of 'SStop thief" was but a subterfuge. 
The NoTth complained of the harshness of the fugitive slave laws, 
but forgot that these complaints would have had absolutely no 
instance of justification— few as there were— but for the folly and 
'"bad faith" of thoise who enco'uraged and aided and incited, by 
sending emissaries, incendiary books, circulars, papers, etc., the 
slaves to leave their Southem homes. 

In the great throb of expansion, which made our country to vi- 
brate like a reed, concessions and readjustments from all sides were 
unavoidable. Of these the South, to say the least of it, made as 
many as did her northern sisters. But at no time was the prime 
motive factor one of moral or religious consideration ; all the while 
and all the time both sides acted from questions of pecuniary policy. 
To understand iwWj this fact it will be necessary for us to recall 
some of the history of our country prior to the passage of the Mis- 
souri measures by Congress. It must be borne in luind that the ad- 
dendum to the Missouri bill prohibiting slavery in the territories 
while in a territorial state outside of Missouri and north of 36° 30', 
applied only to the Louisiana Purchase. At the time this provision 
became operative (1820), the United States had no claim, except 
a joint occupancy with Great Britain of the Oregon country (be- 
gun in 1818, ended in 1846), further west than the western border 
of Lonisiana; thence with the Eed river west to the present boun- 
dary of Oklahoma; thence north to the Arkansas river; thence west 
to the present boundary of Colorado, and thence north to the Ore- 
gon conntry. All to the west and sonth of this territory belonged to 
Mexico. From the very first the North had opposed the purchase 
of the Louisiana boundary. This opposition was one purely po- 
litical in its origin. Jolm Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, speak- 
ing of the proposed purchase, said, "One inevitahle consequence of 
the annexation would be to diminish the relative weight and in- 



*Smith, The Liberty and Free Soil Parties, p. 227. 



64 XORTIIERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

fluence of the northern section.""' Of this oj^position j\Ir. Sparks, 
of the Chicago University, remarks that the "New England inter- 
est lay at sea, and she had no sympathy with southern agriculture. 
Even her infant manufactories \TOuld desire to prevent western mi- 
gration for the sake of retaining workmen. Such con.siderations, 
founded on inherited conservatism, were engendering an obstruc- 
tionist feeling in that section characteristic to this day.'""" 

In the territorial division as made by the Missouri Compromise, 
the I\orth secured an advantage which she showed was fully appre- 
ciated when it came to a question of repealing the restrictive clause 
or addendum. To the south of tlie line set for the expansion of 
agricultural interests where slaves might be employed, were less than 
224,445 square miles, while to the north of that line were over 9G4,- 
067 square miles of territory. As Mr. Sparks remarks, "This meant 
one OT possibly two states for the South, and at least six or seven 
for the ISTorth.""' It was about that time that ]\Iexico revolted 
against Spain, and no one could guess or even suspect that we should 
afterwards acquire Texas any more than it was then suspected that 
we should by this time own important islands thousands of miles 
from our mainland. This division was unfair to the South, and 
the advantage it gave the JSTorth was one reason why the repeal of 
the limiting provision was opposed so strongly in 1854. 

That section of Mexico next to the United States seceded, nnd in 
1837 applied for admission to the Union as the State of Texas. It had 
previously been recognized as the Republic of Texas by England, 
France, Belgium, and the United States. Of course, this application 
raised a political storm; the annexation of Texas meant more 
strength in the Senate for agricultural interests, and these interests 
had little in common Math those of the l^orth as they were at that 
time. It is plain tliat the opposition to the admission of Texas was 
almost wholly based upon purely political con'siderations. Michigan 
struck the keynote of the opposition in the resolution imanimously 
passed by her legislature April 2, 1838, when she declared, "And, 
whereas, the extension of this General Government over so large a 
country on the southwest, between which and that of the original 
states, there is so little affinity and less identitv of interests would 



'"'^Sparks. Expansion of the American People. 201, 
iwib., 201. 
lo^Ib, 311. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 65 

tend, in the opinion of this Legislature, greatly to disturb the safe 
and harmonious operations of the Government of the United States, 
and put in eminent danger the continuance of this happy Union." 
Massachusetts, by her legislature, in protesting, declared that the 
annexation of Texas would "disturb the relations o^f the different 
sections" of the country in Congress. That is, she was excited be- 
cause the political predominance of the South seemed to loom 
across her pathway. Maine protested through the lower House of 
her legislature because she said the annexation of Texas was "di- 
rectly calculated to disturb our foreign relations, to destroy our do- 
mestic peace, and to dismember our blessed Union." William H. 
Seward, at one time governor of New York, for years a member of 
the United States Senate, and finally member of Lincoln's cabinet, 
on July 13, 1844, in a speech to "one of the largest assemblages ever 
convened in Western New York," said, "Texas and slavery are at 
war with the interests, the principles, and the sympatliies of all. 
The integrity of the Union depends on the result. To increase the 
slave-holding power is to subvert the Constitution ; to give a fearful 
preponderance, which may, and possibly will, be speedily followed 
by demands to which the democratic free labor States cannot yield, 
and the demand of which will be made the ground for secession, 
nullification, and disunion."'"' 

No fight on moral grounds was made in Congress or by any im- 
portant number of individuals in the North against the admission 
of Texas or other territory where slavery was or might be legal. 
And as a matter of history, the fact is well known that not nntil 
nearly 1840 had the North caught the idea that any cause will have 
more general support if it can claim moral considerations as an 
excuse for its existence. Northern leaders saw that by furnishing 
erroneous information with reference to the condition of slavery in 
the South, and that by painting a picture of that institution in such 
a light as would be repulsive to the religioius convictions of men, 
much could be gained for political support that would never be 
reached otherwise. Until false figures, erroneous representations, 
books which had no foundation in truth, and inflammatory litera- 
ture, did their work, the abolition movement found widespread op- 
position in the North. While this opposition never entirely disap- 



"sWorks, V. III., p. 253. 
5 



66 KORTHERX EEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERX SECESSIOX. 

peared, yet it surrendered to the more aggi-essive and less scrupulous 
element. It was but natural that Xorthern born men should stand 
by their leaders when the crucial crisis came/ even though they be- 
lieved, as many did, that the desired end might have been reached 
had other methods been adopted. I do not forget to give the 
proper credit to the comparatively few honest moralists who com- 
bined their efforts with a large number of designing politicians; 
but just the same, the whirlpool which was engendered engulfed the 
nation. 

The fact that the abolition number in the Xortli for many years 
was small, did not indicate a large pro-slavery element. It simply 
meant that Northerners generally believed in allowing the South 
to solve her own slave question just as had tlie several States of 
every section of the North — from New England to Illinois and Min- 
nesota and California — just as did Old England, and as were the 
nations of the earth doing. 

Let me say here, once for all, that the claim that the "sin" of 
slavery must find an atonement in the shedding of white blood, is 
forever refuted by the fact that England suppressed slavery and 
the slave-trade, and remunerated her slave-holders, too, and not a 
drop of blood did she shed. I feel sure that tlie unanimous verdict 
of the learned world is that no other people or nation, or the indi- 
viduals of any other nation or part of a nation, ever committed more 
sin against tJie negro than did England. The history of the destruc- 
tion of slavery in English dependencies unquestionably refutes the 
false theory that America could rid herself of slavery only through 
a blood atonement. 

As soon as the struggle over tlie admission of Texas was over, in 
appreciation of the fact that we were liable to acquire other terri- 
tory from Mexico, David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, in 184G, 
''brought before Congress a bill to p-ohihit slawery in all the territory 
which might be secured by treaty witli Mexico." This bill was lost. 
It was called the Wilmot Proviso, and its promoters went before the 
country with a candidate (Mr. Van Buren, 1848), but so weak was 
the party favoring slave prohibition or any national interference, 
and so illy defined was its position with reference to slaver^'- in the 
territories, that it had little support, and Gen. Tyler, a native of 
Virginia, vras elected. This shows tliat the Southern people were 



XOETIIERX KEBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 67 

by uo means peculiar in their views of slavery; and that the peo- 
ple in the North who claimed to be anti-slavery on moral grounds 
were not strong enough to have had any appreciable weight in the 
emancipation of iSTew England slaves. In another division I discussed 
the growth of anti-slavery sentiment on Northern soil, and examined 
the meaning of the cooperation of .the North with the South in 
passing national slave laws. In September, 1849, the question of 
local or national control of slavery came again before the people. 
Delegates representing the Territory of California met and framed 
a State Constitution, and inserted a clause in prohibition of slavery. 
Upon this Constitution she asked for admission to the Union. At 
once the Northern anti-slavery advocates espoused her cause, and 
argued that she, in her local capacity, as of right she might, had 
settled the slavery question. This was the precise doctrine of the 
repeal clause in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the position for 
which the South had contended, and so Southern members of Con- 
gress voted with tlie North for the admission of California. How- 
ever, there was considerable opposition to the admission of that 
State, not because of the doctrine involved, but because the South 
insisted that the North was not acting fairly on the slave question. 
A large part of California is south of 3G° 30', and a fair application 
of the restrictive clause would have preserved that part at least free 
from restriction. Nevertheless, the Northern party exhibited "bad 
faith," and themselves,- declare -Julian Hawthorne"'' and other 
Northern historians, proposed a violation of the Missouri Compro- 
mise. It w^as contended, and rightly, that under the Constitution 
Congress had passed a law providing that escaped slaves should be 
returned. It was pointed out that the North not only refused to re- 
turn slaves that had run away, but that her citizens were aiding 
them to escape and inciting them in every possible way to do so; 
8.nd that Northern States themselves had become parties to these 
unlawful acts by their legislative enactments in nullification of the 
laws of Congress passed pursuant to the Constitution. It was 
readily seen that when it came to strengthening political power the 
Northern politicians were very much in favor of the right of a 
State to decide her local, domestic affairs. This contradictory po- 
sition of the North helped to augment the bitterness between the 



lo'Hlst U. S., Vol. 3. 



68 XORTHERX REBELLION AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

two sections, and to make each slower to make concession's to the 
other. Clay, the great Kentnckian, has the credit of being the 
t-emporary peacemaker. He came forward with what is known as 
the Omnibus Bill, so named because of its numerous provisions. 
It provided (1) for the admission of California as a free State; 
(2) the making of four States- out of the new Texas territory, with 
the provision that these States should determine for themselves the 
question of slavery; (3) the establishment of the Territories of 
Isew Mexico and Utah without slave conditions; (4) the establish- 
ment of the boundary between Texas and Kew Mexico; (5) the en- 
actment of a new law for the recovery of runaway slaves; (6) the 
abolition of the slave-trade in the District of Columbia, which mar- 
ket had been supplied by the ships of Northern men, thus cutting 
off a considerable source of revenue to a large class of Northern 
capitalists. This bill is sometimes denominated the Compromise 
of 1850. It shows concessions from both sides, and demonstrates 
that political considerations and not an awakened conscience on the 
part of either the North or the South, led to each new agitation of 
slavery. 

"We have, then, as precedents to the Kansas-Nebraska bill the or- 
ganization of all previous territories from the earliest of the 
original Northwest to California, and those in the intervening 
space which had grown less rapidly : Utah and New Mexico,"" which, 
in the words of Jas. K. Hosm5r, Ph. D., LL. D., of Minnesota, 
were erected into Territories "with the provision that the people 
living there should decide whether or not slavery should exist.'""^ 
The opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill was left without excuse 
or justification; precedent, Congressional declarations, the voice of 
the majority in the United States, and the Constitution, all pro- 
claimed the Kansas-Nebraska bill fair, legal, and a measure which 
placed the new Territories upon an equal footing in all respects 
whatsoever \\dth all prior Territories. The results of the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill were so far-reaching that the other objections to it 
must be examined at greater length. 



""Reports of Committees, 36 Cong.. 1 sess., v. 3, No. 508, Min. R. 
"lA Short Hist, of the Miss. Valley (1901), p. 169. 



THE NATIONAL CHARACTER OF SLAYE 
LEGISLATION. 

COTTON AND SLAVERY; SLAVERY IN THE OLD NORTHWEST; SLAVERY 
AND OREGON. 

2. As I said, there was a cei-tain objection urged by the North 
to the repeal of the addendum of the Missouri admission bill which 
prohibited slavery noiiJi of 36° 30' and oxitside of Missouri, and that 
was that tliis repeal meant the spread of slavery to such an extent 
that it threatened the very safety of the Eepublic. 

Human beings increase as rapidly, food and clothing being rea- 
sonably obtainable, in a small area as in a large one. Among the 
slaves of the Southern States every rational opportunity was given 
for increase that could have been given in greater territorial area. 
Its restriction to a given territor}^ did not affect slavery so far as 
the condition of the negro himself was concerned; non-restriction 
would, in some instances, have given a more healthy locality in 
which to live and labor. Its territorial spread would make more 
agricultural interests, and each new agricultural State added po- 
litical weight to the South. This made its territorial spread a mat- 
ter to be feared by Northern politicians ; and no matter how little 
of real danger tliere was in this, it served to arouse the populace. 
Yet those who used the argument that the territorial spread im- 
periled the nation either did or could have known its untruth, and 
hence must be held responsible for the result. 

Let me state more fully some of the different phases of the North- 
em argument or contention, and then look carefully to its founda- 
tion. 

"A Southern Oligarchy," "a plutocracy of slavocrats," and simi- 
lar appellations were, and too frequently yet are, gratuitously ap- 
plied to the citizens of the Southern slave-holding States. In a 



/U NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

similar strain Mr. Ehodes"' says, "The Soiith set aside the ]\Iis- 
souri CoaBpromise." As a matter of fact, the South did no such 
thing. Neither did the South enact the much-abused fugitive slave 
law of 1850, nor that of earlier years, as I have elsewhere said. 
When Mr. Ehodes and other Northern writers speak of the repeal 
or setting aside of the "Missouri Compromise," they refer to the 
repeal of the addendum to the Missouri admission bill, which, as 
above shown, affected not Missouri, but the then unsettled territory 
to its west and north, and in which Congress attempted to prohibit 
slavery while these new lands should remain in the territorial state. 
On the first passage of the repeal measure as contained in the 
Kansas-Nebraska bill, the Senate vote was thirty-seven for it and 
fourteen against it.'" In the House it was carried by a majority 
of thirteen."* And on final vote (some amendments having been 
made in the House) it was passed in the Senate by a vote of thirty- 
five to thirteen."' The fugitive slave law of 1850 was likewise 
passed by the aid of a goodly number of Northern Senators and 
representatives. So that these later chief Congressional acts touch- 
ing slavery were, like the regulations of the earlier Congresses and 
the slave provisions in the Constitution, of a more national emana- 
tion than many of our most cherished and respected laws enforced 
to-day. Hen.ce, the terms "slave power," "Southern Oligarchy,'" 
etc., as applied to a party or class peculiar to the Southern States, 
are empty vituperations. That they are such is admitted in tlie 
strangely inconsistent claim, so loudly heralded to the world, that 
as the middle of the century approached the "slave power" was mar- 
shaling into its ranlcs such numbers as threatened to fasten slavery 
forever upon the United States of America. Northern abolition 
advocates were held up as martyrs, and the appeal was sustained by 
such instances as the dragging of Garrison through the streets with 
a rope around his neck, the killing of Lovejoy in 1837, and the 
burning of his office by a mob in Alton, Illinois ; the burning of 
Pennsylvania Hall, and the destruction of the librar\^ belonging to 
Whittier, the poet, at which time he barely escaped the mol) with 
his life. 



"mist, of the U. S., v. I., p. 499. 
"'Schonler, Hist. U. S., v. V., p. 
"nb., 288. 
'"lb., 288. 



NOKTPIERX REBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 71 

As the rising snn of universal freedom shifted the shortening 
shadows which fell across the march of onr nation, demagogues took 
advantage of the imavoidable incidents of progress and proclaimed 
effects to l)e causes. The histor}' of the anti-slavery sentiment 
among the Southern people themselves suffered not least by reason 
of this mistake. It was usual to begin by pointing to the prevail- 
ing emancipation sentiment throughout the South in the first years 
of the last century. We are told that the much lauded Ordinance 
passed by Congress in 1787 for tlie government of the Korthwest 
Territory, secured against the introduction of slavery the States of 
Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, ]\Iichigan, and part of Minnesota, into 
which the original Northwest Territory has been carved. This Or- 
dinance was passed by the feeble Congress sitting under the old 
Confederation; but eight States of the thirte-en were at the time 
represented, and five of these were then regarded as Southern 
States. The committee which favorably reported the bill had a ma- 
jority of Southern men. It is admitted to be a Southern measure."® 
Xo one now questions that the leading Southerners in the first 
years of the last century were anti-slavery advocates. 

About 1830 the emancipation tide began to recede from the 
Southern shores, and within a veiy few years the abolition advo- 
cates were practically all in the Northern States. As late as 1837 
Bimey, the president of the American Abolition Society, which had 
gathered within its folds almost the entire abolition element of the 
Xorth, estimated that in ]\Iaine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, 
Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, 
]\Iicliigan, and Illinois there were 112,480 abolitionists.'" This was 
a very small per cent, of the total Northern people. So those who 
agitated the question then, and many who seek to justify them now, 
argued that the "slave power," as they were fond of calling the po- 
litical party that had so often predominated, was growing in 
strength. They said this was evidenced not alone by the decrease of 
alx)litionists after the type of Jefferson, Randolph, and such South- 
erners, but, in strange contradiction to the charge of a dominating 
"Southern oligarchy or plutocracy of slave-holders," they pointed 
out the national character of the various slave provisions of the 



""Hinsdale. Old Northwest, p. 20,0 : Rhodes' Hist, of the U. S.. v. I . p. 1.5. 
"'The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Xo. 8. p. 7. 



72 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Union, and insisted that danger was threatened because of the 
large number in the free States themselves who voted side by side 
with Southern men in the nation's legislature at Washington in 
enacting laws to enforce the Constitutional provisions concerning 
slavery ; and who voted to grant slave-holders in the Southern States 
the identical privileges slave-holders in the North had enjoyed ; and 
who endeavored to give the slaveholder and his home some measure 
of security; and who voted with the South to give citizens of new 
Territories and States the same privileges which citizens of the 
older States and the first Territorias had enjoyed in forming their 
respective constitutions or in regulating their internal affairs. So 
it was argued that this cooperation of a large element in the North 
with the South meant the territorial spread of slavery until it should 
become irredeemably an American institution. Tliis contention 
gave to the latter years of the anti-slavery movement its greatest 
numbers. I shall here briefly state some of the reasons which show 
that this argument was unsound. I propose to submit that it was 
not supported by past history and not borne out by current events. 
It was accompanied by false and, as fairly representative of any con- 
siderable portion of the slave-holding class, wholly misleading in- 
formation as to the condition and treatment of the slaves. Such 
claims stirred and moved the masses at the North, but being false 
in fact, and unsound in logic, and devoid of true philanthropy in re- 
sult, the secession which was finally provoked was therefore charge- 
able to the aggressors; and just as the North holds the South re- 
sponsible for the actions of her leaders, so should the North be held 
responsible for the actions of those who misinformed and misguided 
her masses. 

First. Let us examine the alleged cause for the decline of the 
emancipation sentiment in the South. 

Many distinguished writers tell us that it was the invention of 
the cotton-gin which gave to slavery a new hold on the South ; and 
that it was because the planter saw a new source of profit in his 
slaves that caused him to abandon emancipation tendencies. Such 
men as Eichard Henry Dana insisted that "the lords of the loom 
and the lords of the lash," as he expressed the political situation, 
had conspired to perpetuate negro slavery. Ehodes sa^-s, "It is more 
than probable that the invention of the cotton-gin prevented the 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 73 

peaceful abolition of slavery. . . . Cotton fostered slavery; slavery 
v/as the cause of the war between the States.""^ This is a repre- 
sentative Northern error. The cotton-gin did procrastinate the 
emancipation of the Southern negro; it did nothing more. At its 
greatest possible length in the onward sweep of the world's progress, 
that delay could not have been fraught with any very serious con- 
sequences — to the nation most certainly — provided all abnormal 
emancipation agitation had been absent. Just here is where Mr. 
Ehodes' voluminous discussion of Soiithern slavery fails; in so far 
as he treats it at all, he treats the abnormal abolition agitation as a 
residt of the slave conditions; whereas, it was the agitation with all 
of its variety of unlawfulness which produced the conditions, and 
continued the slavery. 

If there is one point upon which writers generally agree more 
unanimously than another, it is that slave labor was of an inferior 
kind, and absolutely not susceptible of any important improvement. 
The products of slave labor, natural advantages of climate and 
soil being anything like equal, cannot successfully compete with 
those of free labor. J. A. Doyle, Fellow of All Souls College, Ox- 
ford, England, speaking of the negro slave, says that "no attempt 
to enlarge his sphere of activity can be attended with profit. The 
time given to the new acquisition is so much waste and his mental 
incapacity and absence of any moral interest in his work almost 
necessarily limit him to a single task.""* 

Not only is the product inferior, but in slave communities com- 
petition in labor is impossible. Intelligent white labor avoids 
menial occupations in slave territory. Writing with reference to 
the negro slave as he was in the Southern States, with all the his- 
tory of those States before him, Mr. Doyle, in 1883, also says, "And 
when once negro slavery was firmly established any rival form of 
industry was doomed. For it is an economic law of slavery that 
when it exists it must exist without a rival. It can only succeed 
when it is a predominant form of labor.'"^" 

Now, the cotton-gin did not belong to the Southern States of 
America, nor was theirs the only cotton country. During the Civil 



"'Hist, of the U. S.. v. I., p. 26-27 
"^English Colonies in America, p. 
"'lb, 387. 



74 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

War at a cotton-growers' conference, gathered in response to Eng- 
lish manufacturers, thirtj^-five cotton growing countries were rep- 
resented. Of these Peru, the West Indies, Brazil, China, Italy, 
Turkey, Greece, India (which alone cultivates over 14,000 acres), 
and Egypt presented the most formidable source of competition. 
We are told that "the colonies and dependencies of Great Britain, 
including India, seemed well able to grow all the cotton that could 
be required.''"' The same authority tells us that even prior to 
1793, the advent of the cotton-gin, "progressive improvement in 
the cultivation" of cotton had begim in all these countries. Brazil 
lingered longest in the crude methods of slaveiy, and as a result 
these "rude and expensive methods of cultivation" for some years 
operated against the Brazilian cotton industry. Thus it was early 
demonstrated that the free labor and intelligent interest employed 
in the vast cotton fields of the Avorld made a competition which noth- 
ing but improved methods and machinery, such as railroads, im- 
proved compresses, intelligent application of fertilizers, improved 
gins, and the various other improvements over slave methods, such 
as the South everywhere exhibits to-day, enables her to meet in 
competition the cotton crop of the world. The Southern white man 
has joined the labor forces necessary to do all this; during slave 
days to have him do so was impossible. Nor was this all : outside 
capital, which has done much to destroy Southern conservatism, 
could never have entered the Southern market under slave labor. 
These conditions of slavery made themselves early felt in the more 
northern of the Southern States. It is a correct observation of 
William Garrott Brown, in his 1902 course of Harvard University 
historical lectures, when he says, "Slavery in Virginia was a failure 
as compared with free labor in the ISTorth. . . ." And he further 
states what was an undisputed condition which was growing out of 
this, when he says, "By the beginning of the nineteenth century it 
was clear that Virginia and the upper States of the South, if left 
to themselves, would almost certainly change their industrial sv's- 
tem.""^ 

So, while waiting for improved methods of industry under 
slavery, other cotton countries would have passed the Southern 



"'Werner's Enc. Brit.. Cotton. 

"^'The Lower South in American History, p. 1." 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. YO 

States in the excellence and amount of the crop^ which wonld have 
forced planters to an unprofitable cultivation. This wonld have 
brought emancipation or banlvruptcy — and unquestionably bank- 
ruptcy meant emancipation for the negTo. Egypt alone could have 
produced this condition. Some years agO' an authority wrote, "It 
if< not perhaps too much to say that Egypt is the finest cotton-grow- 
ing country in the world ; it is not surpassed in productiveness even 
by the Southern States of America. So firm is the growth of cotton 
established, and so fully are both the govermuent and the people 
alive to its importance and advantages, that there is no reason to 
apprehend that it will be allowed to decline or that Egypt will ever 
lose its place as a source of supply."^'^ How formidable a competi- 
tor this fertile Nile country has become is shown from our most 
recent (1900) census of the United Stated. In it an authority says : 
"The use of Egyptian cotton for the manufacture of fine fabrics, 
but more especially as material for knit underwear, has grown 
greatly during the last decade. . . . Egyptian cotton possesses some 
peculiarities which adapt it especially to the use to which it is put. 
It is especially desirable, on account of its natural silkiness, for the 
process of mercanization.'""* We are now importing for manufac- 
turing in America 3'early about five million dollars worth of this 
Egyptian gTown cotton. With the intelligence of free labor and the 
improved gins which were early introduced, the great cotton coun- 
tries of the world soon would have driven Southern slavery from 
its last stronghold. 

Then, again, whatever the possibilities which cotton furnished 
slavery, these were limited to a comparatively small area of the 
Union territory as it existed at the time when the anti-slavery fires 
began to burn Avith such fury in the North, or even considering the 
United States as she is to-day. A glance at the cotton area, as 
shown on the map accompanying our last census, will show that free 
territory must forever have been in the ascendency. If, as Brown, 
AA-hom we quoted a few pages ago, and all Northern writers agree, 
Virginia and the upper Southern States would have emancipated 
their slaves early in the century if left alone, then this would have 
reduced the slave territory to such an insignificant area, and this 



^"Werner's Brit. Egvpt. 

i=*Twelfth Census, v. IX., pt. 3, p. 37. 



76 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

small area would have had such a minority in the nation's voice as 
would have rendered it entirely harmless during whatever time 
natural, normal progress required to drive slavery from American 
soil. Whatever agitation checked this inevitable end, was the result 
of fanatical excitement or the want of patriotic and statesmanlike 
foresight. That there was no other industries then or now which 
could have fostered the continuance of slavery, the evidence of so 
eminent a scholar as Mr. Ehodes will be representative of the al- 
most unlimited cumulative evidence I might adduce. He says, 
"Eice, sugar, and cotton were, apparently, the only products for 
which slave labor was necessary, and compared with cotton, sugar, 
and rice, were insignificant products. Tobacco and grain could be 
cultivated with greater economy by freemen.'"'' Hence, when com- 
petition had destroyed the cotton industry, it must at the same time 
have destroyed the slavery to the existence of which a profitable pro- 
duction of cotton was absolutely necessary. 

However much or little the true solution was comprehended 
either Forth or South, the fact yet remains that the possibilities 
of cotton were fully realized and that early in the last century, — at 
least prior to 1815. The cotton-gin was invented in 1793, and be- 
fore 1815 it had revolutionized the cotton industry. More than 
two nations were awake to the possibilities of one of our greatest 
modern industries. Long after this time the South continued to be 
the strong advocate of emancipation. 

The Kentucky abolition society, in a petition communicated to 
Congress in January, 1816, speaking of Southern conditions — and 
no one disputed the assertions — said that "great numbers of slaves 

have been emancipated and it may be expected from 

the spirit of benevolence that seems to be taking place among all 
classes of citizens that the number will be daily increasing.""* A 
quarter of a century of the new era of cotton saw no dimunition in 
Southern emancipation tendencies. During this time abolition had 
grown steadily no less rapidly in the South than in the North. It 
was as late as 1832 that the legislature of Virginia came so near 
passing a gradual emancipation law. As Webster said, there can 
be no doubt but that if interference had been absent that State 



"'Rhodes' Hist, of the U. S., v. I., p. 26-27. 
"'Am. State Papers : Misc., v. II., p. 270. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 7? 

would have carried out within a few months the work which was so 
nearly finished at that time.'" Dunn, who by no means is in sym- 
pathy with tlie Southern contention, in his history of Indiana, says, 
"In 1827 there were one hundred and thirty abolition societies in 
this country, and only twenty-four of them were in the free 
States."^^* We see, then, that for more than a quarter of a centur}' 
the growth of the cotton industry moved side by side with Southern 
emancipation teachings and exten)sive organized efforts in that 
section to make emancipation safe and practical in the South. But 
long before 1827 the South had been subjected to a cross-fire. On 
tlie one hand she realized the necessity and felt the desirability of 
emancipating her slaves, and on the other hand she was attacked by 
at first the few but constantly increasing Northern abolitionists 
with the most violent bitterness. Very early it began to be dis- 
covered that such an agitation by the ISTorth produced most disas- 
trous results upon the slaves themselveB. So that within a very 
fcAv months after the tide started northward the South completely 
changed her front; the agencies that had long since begun to work 
in her midst had brought the Southern people to confront condi- 
tions which involved more than money; more than political and 
economic conditions. The South was forced to realize that an agi- 
tation of emancipation, especially when that agitation was accom- 
panied by the systematic work (such as will be noticed in exam- 
ining the "underground railroad" movement) of assisting slaves to 
run away in large numbers, made the slaves a source of danger to 
be feared as much by Southern men and women as they were feared 
by JSTortherners during the slave period in that section. For in- 
stance, in New York, where in 1741 an unfounded fear of a servile 
insurrection caused "fourteen negroes to be burned at the stake and 
twenty-four hanged.""" Mr. Seward, once governor of JSTew York, 
for a number of 5'ears a United States Senator and Secretary of 
State under President Lincoln, tells us that on this occasion lawyers 
refused to defend the accused, and that the Supreme Court and the 
entire bar assisted in the prosecution ; and that in addition to those 
killed "fifty were transported and sold into foreign slavery.""" Or 



"^Webster's Works, v. 5, p. 357. 

i^sHist. of Indiana, p. 190. 

i^sTheodore Roosevelt, New York, Historic Town Series, p. 101. 

""Works, Vol. II., p. 59. 



Vb XORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

where in 18G3 "man}- negroes were hirng or beat to death with lin- 
gering cnielty" on the mere suspicion of incendiarism."' 

So for those who do not arbitrarily^ refuse to regard the human 
nature common to all Americans, it is not difficult to see that tlie 
Northern emancipation agitation, carried on as it had come to be 
before 1830 on Southern soil and among the slaves themselves, 
threatened not alone propert}- in the slaves, but, in the words of 
Governor White in his message to the legislature of Louisiana in 
1836, jeopardized "our peace, our fortunes, our lives, and those 
of our children.'""' Later in this monograph I shall call atten- 
tion to the fact that tlie combined efEorts of all classes of anti- 
slavery men at the North resulted not alone in the destruction of 
Southern anti-slavery sentiment, but that the stream became so tur- 
bid as it, hurried down the years from the northward that the South- 
ern leaders came to believe that secession was tlie only remedy. 

Having seen something of what was and what was not the cause 
of the decline of anti-slavery teaching-s in one locality of the Union, 
1 desire now to present what I submit shows that at no time in our 
nations history was the per cent, of pro-slavery advocates increas- 
ing — the nation considered as a whole; and, second, that the co- 
operation of tlie many in the North with the pro-slavery South- 
emers did not threaten the territorial spread of slavery until it 
should become a dominating political force and a menace to the na- 
tion. Incidentally, it will be seen tliat the economic forces which I 
have mentioned as destined finally to reach the cotton industry, were 
already at work in our country. The same economic forces which 
had shaped the early political attitude of New England on slave 
questions were steadily driving all American negro slavery to an 
unprofitable basis, which necessarily meant its final rooting from 
our soil. 

That slavery disappeared from the older North because it became 
unprofitable cannot now be seriously questioned. That this is now 
generally admitted, the testimony of the following eminent North- 
ern scholars will leave no doubt: F. A. Walker, Ph. D., LL. D., 
president Mass. Inst. Tech. ;"' Joel Domian Steele, Ph. D., F. G. 



"'Roosevelt, New York, p. 204. 
"-Gayarre, Hist, of Louisiana, v. IV., p. 
"3The Making of the Nation, p. 209. 



NOllTHERX EtBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 79 

S., and Esther Baker Steele, Lit. D. ;'"* Professor Chaiming;"' Car- 
roll D. Wright, LL. D. (some years United States Commissioner 
of Labor),"" and George Bancroft.'" Pages might be filled with 
snch eminent names. That unfavorable economic conditions drove 
slaverj^ from the North is not dispiited by any one of recognized 
authority, so far as I can learn ; but the fact that it is often treated 
in such a way as to cause the force of this truth to be lost, makes it 
necessary to give it some emphasis here. Let me content myself by 
quoting the language of the eminent historian and politician, GeoTge 
Bancroft, of Massachusetts, ' who was first Secretary of the Navy 
and the minister to England. He says of the negro that "... even 
the climate of Virginia was too chill for him. His labor, therefore, 
increased in value as he proceeded south; and hence the relation 
of master and slave came to be essentially a Southern institu- 
tion.""' And again he says, "At the end of the eighteenth century 
slavery seemed to be dying in America less because the consciences 
of men were aroused to its enormity than because it was economi- 
cally unprofitable." Certainly it is of no little interest to add the 
cumulative testimony of a negro who, born a slave, has reached a 
standard of intellectuality unequaled by another of his race, and 
who sees the negro's past, present, and future with the comprehen- 
sive grasp of a philosopher, — Booker T. Washington. He says, "It 
was soon found, however, that slave labor was not remunerative in 
the Northern States, and for that reason by far the greater portion 
of the slaves were held in the Southern States, where their labor in 
raising cotton, rice, and sugar-cane was more productive.""' 

Turning next to the newer North, which was for years the north- 
v\-est, we find the same causes operated to determine the status of 
the negro. 

In 1784 the United States created what is generally known as 
the Northwest Territory, and in 1787 Congress passed the famous 
Ordinance repealing that of 1784. This was the first territory held 
in common after the Confederated union of the thirteen original 



"^Hist. of the U. S. (Barnes' Sohool Series), p. 172. 
"^Hist. of the U. S. (Student's), p. 140. 
""Industrial Evolution of the United States, p. 151. 
"^History of the U. S., v. II. 
i^sHistory of the U. S.. v. II., p. 27.5. 
"^The Future of the American Negro, p. 6. 



80 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

States. With this territory was inherited its Indian and negro 
slavery, both of which had existed under Spanish, French, and 
British dominion. From this territory were carved the present 
States of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of 
Minnesota. Its government was not organized until 1788. Arthur 
St, Clair, of Scottish birth and Boston residence, was its first gov- 
ernor. Jurisdiction was not extended to some of the French settle- 
ments until 1790."° July 4, 1800, the Northwest Territory had 
what is now Ohio and part of Michigan severed from it. The east- 
ern part continued to be called the Northwest Territory until it 
became the State of Ohio in 1803. The western part, after the di- 
vision, was called the Indiana Territory, and William Henry Harri- 
son, of Tippecanoe fame, afterward elected President of the United 
States by the Whigs, was made the first governor. St. Clair was 
cO'Utinued governor of that section which is now the State of Ohio, 
until it became a State with not so large an area as that covered 
during its territorial existence. The present State of Ohio in 1803 
was admitted to the full rights of statehood. In 180§ the Indiana 
Territory had severed from it that portion to the west of the 
Wabash river, — after separation called the Territory of Illinois, — 
embracing all her lands to the northwest except Michigan, north of 
the present State of Indiana. 

The Ordinance of 1787, re-creating the Northwest Territory, 
provided that it should be divided and erected into States when 
certain portions had a population of sixty thousand free inhabi- 
tants, or sooner, if Congress should think best. It was provided 
that these new States were to be admitted to their respective posi- 
tions in the new Confederated union "on an equal footing with the 
original States in all respects whatsoever.'"" 

Mr. Eoosevelt, speaking of this Ordinance, says that "it stipu- 
lated that slavery should never exist in the States formed" from the 
Northwest."' President Woodrow Wilson, Ph. D., Litt. D., LL. D., 
of Princeton University, in his recent masterly history, speaking 
of the formation of States from the Northwest Territor^^ says, "The 
Ordinance was still the law of the land. It forbade slavery for- 



"»Dunn, Hist, of Indiana, p. 261. 

"^Hinsdale. Old Northwest, p. 264 ; Sparlcs, Expansion of the American People, 
p. 84-.5 ; United States Charters and Constitutions, 249-432. 
"^Winning of the West, v. III., p. 234. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 81 

ever.'"" With this opinion, which is hekl generally, I do not agi-ee ; 
and I shall submit the history of local slave legislation in the 
Northwest, and the attitude of CongTess toward that legislation in 
support of my demurrer. 

It will be remembered that the present Constitution of the Union 
had no existence when the Ordinance was passed. Since each new 
State was to be equal "in all respects whatsoever" to the older ones ; 
and since the Confederation preserved to each old State its sover- 
eig-nty, when the new States emerged from Territories, had there 
cever been a change in the Confederation they would have passed 
into sovereign Statehood; hence, the management of internal in- 
stitutions not surrendered to Congress would have followed. Since 
legal slavery in any State w^as not repugnant to the Confederation 
(or to the Constitution which supplanted it), the slave question 
must have fallen to the ISTorthwest States, or to the people of the 
several Territories which became States, for their separate and re- 
spective final settlement. 

In 1784 Mr. Jefferson offered the bill for the organization of the 
new northwest, which became the law, one article relating to slavery 
being the only exception to the adoption of the original draft. The 
language in this article and the language in the Ordinance, which 
became the law in 1T87, are strikingly similar. The ordinance of 
1784 attempted to apply the slave regulation to the period of State- 
hood. Congress refused to pass this provision. The sixth article 
of the Ordinance of 1787, which did become the law, read side by 
side with that of 1784, which Congress refused to accept, helps to 
make it clear that the one which became the law was intended only 
for tJie Territorial period. 

"3A Hist. Am. People (Harpers, 1902), v. 3, p. 2-50. 



82 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 



Ord. (Slav. Peov.) 1784. 



Sixth Art. (the only slavery pro- 
vision). 

Ordinance 1787. 



"That after the year 1800, of the 
Christian era, there shall be neither "There shall be neither slavery nor 

slavery nor involuntary servitude in involuntary servitude in said terri- 
any of the said States, otherwise tory, otherwise than in the punisb- 
than in the punishment of crimes, ™ent of crimes whereof the party 
whereof the party shall have been shall have been duly convicted; Pro 
duly comacted to have been per- vided always, that any person ea- 
sonally guilty."^" caping into the same from whom 

labor or service is lawfully claimed," 
shall be returned."' 

This wording of the provision which failed to become a law, com- 
pared with the one that was enacted, the latter construed in the 
light of the several local Territorial and then State slave regula- 
tions wliieh followed, resting upon the provision in the final Ordi- 
nance that the new States were to be on "an equal footing with the 
original States in all respects whatsoever," — ^and this construed "with 
reference to its purpose, careful attention being given to the word- 
ing of the Ordinance throughout, — all help us to see that the slave 
provision or the much praised "forever sixth compact," imquestion- 
ably was applicable no longer, at least, than the Northwest or any 
part thereof remained a Territory. 

In fact, under the Constitution citizens of the Territories and 
Congress went further. Both the local organizations and the na- 
tional government treated the slavery provision as binding merely 
until the local Territorial legislative authority assumed general leg- 
islation and thereafter only so long as the Territorial legisla- 
tive power failed to take legislative action touching domestic 
slavery. Upon no other interpretation can we account for the 
action taken by the various local Territorial bodies, and the 
Congressional ratification of their law?, to both of which I shall 
presently call attention. The only legal effect of the Ordinance of 
1787, then, was to give the non-slave-holding class the advantage 
in unsettled sections in the early settlement of the country — an ad- 
vantage which they utilized. Having once the advantage, it was 



"♦Randall's Life of Jefferson, v. 1. p. 307. 

"'Smith, The St. Clair Tapers, v. I., p. 133 : Wilson, A Hist, of the Am. Peo- 
ple, v. 3, p. 309. 



XORTHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 83 

plain that advantage easily could be held when the question came to 
be settled by local authorities. 

W'hat is it, then, in the Ordinance upon wliich historians base 
tlieir claims that slavery was forever denied to both the Territories 
and States formed from the original Northwest ? It is this : 

On reading the entire Ordinance, it will be observed that it is 
divided into fourteen sections, and these are followed by six articles. 
The sections, after the declaration that the Ordinance is for the 
'•'government of the TeiTitory," begins by setting forth that it is for 
the purposes of temporary government; then making some provi- 
sions for the descent of property, necessitated because of the recent 
rules of the Spanish, French, and later British laws, created the of- 
ficials, and set out their duties; then it declares that the governor 
and judges shall adopt, publish, and report to Congress ''such laws 
of the original States, both civil and criminal, as may be necessary," 
until the organization of the general assembly, which laws were to 
be "in full f orce^' "unless disapproved by Congress" or altered by the 
legislature after it assumed the legislative duties. Then the func- 
tions of the legislators were declared to be to "make laws in all 
cases for the good government of the district, not repugnant to the 
principles and articles in this ordinance established and declared." 
And then section 13 introduces the Articles by declaring, "For ex- 
tending the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, 
... to provide for the establishment of States and permanent gov- 
ernment therein, and for their admission for a share in the Federal 
councils on an equal footing with the original States, at as early a 
period as may be consistent with the general interest : 

"Section 14. It is hereby ordained and declared, by the authority 
aforesaid, that the following articles shall be considered as ar- 
ticles of compact between the original States and the people and 
States in the said territory, and forever remain unalterable unless, 
by common consent, to-wit : . . . " Then follow the six articles, the 
sixth and last, the slavery provision, the one I gave in full above. 
"Forever remain unalterable" — there is the historian's usual shil)- 
boleth. But — ^have these words been treated in their literal meaning? 
Not by very much. With the advent of our present Constitution, 
which supplanted the Confederation under which this Ordinance 
was passed, an interpretation has been given the entire document 



84 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

more in conformity to the doctrines of the Constitution. That Con- 
gress meant to construe and enforce the Ordinance according to 
the principles of the Constitution is evident, in the fii^st place, from 
the act passed at the first session of the first Congress (ITS!)) under 
the Constitution, which was passed "so as to ladapt" the Ordinance 
"to the present Constitution of the United States.""" 

Section 4 of the Ordinance declares that the "said territory, and 
the States which may be formed therein, shall forever remain a part 
of this confederacy of the United States of America, subject to the 
Articles ol Confederation, and to such alterations therein as shall 
be constitutionally made.""' This mentions not the territory only, 
but the States to be formed therein, and passes such States under 
our Constitution as the "constitutional" successor of the Articles of 
Confederation; so that whatever applies to all other States under 
the Gonstitution, would apply to these new States. This article even 
goes further; it makes these States subject to all acts and ordi- 
nances of the United States "in Congress assembled," which are 
conformable "to whatever alterations are to the Confederation 
made." So that no Congressional provision could have been ap- 
])Iied to one of these States which the Constitution would have for- 
bidden to be applied to any State in the Union. Article 5 provides 
unequivocally for not more than five States, which provision has 
been utterly disregarded. It sets out the boundaries for these; this 
provision has been broken, and that without the consent of the 
States concerned."' It provides that the new States "shall be ad- 
mitted [each] by its delegates into the Congress of the United 
States, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects 
whatsoever, and shall be at liberty to form a permanent constitu- 
tion and State government," — which shows that the government in 
the Ordinance itself had nothing whatever of permanency except 
that it meant to get the new States into the brotherhood of States 
just as if they had been of the original number — "share and share 
alike." In view of this fact, and the further fact that the word 
'"'States" is coupled with every extra-territorial compact through- 
out the articles, and is not used in the sixth and last, it is clear, to 



"T..!?. Ch. and Cons., 433. 
"'U. S. Ch. and Cons., 431. 
"SBuinet, Notes, 350. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 85 

HI}' mind, that even if there had been no change in the Confedera- 
tion, tlie slavery provision would not have extended to tlie period 
of Statehood. But since the Constitution had not altered State 
jurisdiction over slavery, the new States were entitled to a like ju- 
risdiction. x\fter the adoption of the Constitution, the people gen- 
erally took this view of the situation, and evidently they then felt 
that Territorial jurisdiction preceded State control; and as I shall 
show later, Congress actually recognized the validity of slave laws 
made by Territorial law-making powers. The principles of the 
Constitution prevailed. The Ordinance declared that a ffeehold 
in fifty acres of land "and two year's' residence in the district, shall 
be necessary to qualify" a man to vote — no distinction as to color. 
By the Constitution of Illinois in 1818, section 27, it is declared 
that "in all elections white male inliabitants" only could vote."* 
Yet on December 3, 1818, Congress declared this in conformity 
with the Ordinance,'"* which meant the Ordinance as interpreted 
under the Constitution. 

The wording of the first laws of CongTCss touching the slaves in 
any part of the country, be it territorial or State, is of importance 
in determining how Congress meant to interpret and construe the 
sixth or prohibitive article in the Ordinance. February, 1792, the 
first national fugitive slave law passed the Senate entirely without 
opposition, and in the House it had but seven in the negative. Its 
first provision was, "That when a person held to labor in any of 
the United States, or in either of the territories on the northwest 
or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into 
any other of the said states or territories, the person to whom such 
service or labor may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby em- 
powered to seize" and carry before an officer and have such fugitive 
returned. "Under the laws thereof," that is, under the local laws 
of either the Territory covered by the ordinance, or those of 
the Territory lying to the south of tlie Ohio river. Most cer- 
tainly here is a plain statement that under the Constitution the 
Territories — "either of them" — might enact measures, so that 
"under the laws thereof" slaves might be legally held. Hence, 
from the beginning to the end, we have both the words and the acts 



i«U. S. Ch. and Cons., 44^ 
isoib., 449. 



80 XORTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of Coiig-ress, in conjimction with the local legislatures, giving to 
the prohibitive elanse of the Ordinance a construction in confor- 
mity with full local control of slavery. 

Oregon's history furnishes some important evidence in support 
of my contention that under the Constitution of the United States 
slavery regulations were always left to the people of a Territory, 
and that afterAvard the same rule followed its people into State- 
hood. It is also a valuable witness, in support of my contention, 
that the Ordinance of 1787, as construed under the Constitution, 
did no* forbid slavery jurisdiction to local Territorial authority or 
to their successors under State jurisdiction. 

August 14, 1848, the President approved the act of Congress es- 
tablishing the Territorial government of Oregon. This act at- 
tempted to apply the Ordinance of 1787 to the Oregon Territory. 
Section 14 declares : 

"The inhabitants of the said Territory shall be entitled to enjoy 
all and singular the rights, privileges, and advantages granted and 
secured to the people of the United States northwest of the river 
Ohio, by the articles of compact contained in the ordinance for the 
government of the said territory, on the thirteenth day of July, 
seventeen hundred and eighty-seven, and shall be subject tO' all 
the conditions, and restrictions and prohibitions, in said articles 
of compact imposed upon the people of the said territory." 

Hence, whatever relation the slavery provision of the Ordinance 
of 1787 boTe to the Territories and States of the Old Northwest, ap- 
pertained to Oregon. 

"Squatter sovereignty," the right of the people in any political 
unit to determine their own local questions, one of which is domes- 
tic slavery, is nowhere more strongly seen than in Oregon's history. 
July 5, 1843, the people of Oregon Territorj^ "for mutual protec- 
tion and to secure peace and prosperity among" themselves, adopted 
a code of organic laws "until such time as the United States of 
America extend jurisdiction over us," in the fifth article of which 
they declared that "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary 
servitude in such territory."'" In 1844 the legislature of the pro- 
visional government again assumed jurisdiction of slavery, and also 



'^'^W. H. Gray, A Hist, of Oregon (Portland and San Francisco, 1870), 353-4; 
Bancroft's Worlis, v. 29, 306. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 87 

passed anti-negro laws of extreme severity, designed to rid the coam- 
try of free negroes, or mulattoes, "and to prevent tlie coming of 
others.'"'' Section 14 of the Congressional act of August 14, 1848, 
also further declared that "the existing laws now enforced in the 
Territory of Oregon, under the authority of the provisional govern- 
ment established by the people thereof, shall continue to be valid 
and operative therein, so far as the same be not incompatible with 
the Constitution of the United States and the principles and pro- 
visions of this act, subject, nevertheless, to be altered, modified, or 
lepealed by the legislative assembly of the said Territory of 
Oregon.'"'" This unquestionably recognized as valid the prohibition 
of slavery by the local, Territorial, authority. Just as had all the 
local Territorial legislative bodies in the Old Northwest, so the peo- 
ple of Oregon understood that the concluding words oi this same 
section declared that the Territory, irrespective of Congressional 
interference, might alter, modify, or repeal this local prohibition of 
slavery and establish it as a legal institution. This is forcibly mani- 
fest from the fact that the constitutional convention of 1857, in 
article 8, section 4, of the constitution, submitted to a vote of the 
people the question of slavery, and provided that if a "majority of 
all the votes given for and against slavery shall be given for 
slavery," the constitution should declare that, "Persons lawfully 
held as slaves in any State, Territory, or district of the United 
States under the laws thereof, may be brought into this State, and 
such slaves and their descendants may be held as slaves within this 
State, and shall not be emancipated without the consent of their 
owners."'" 

Thus Oregon provided tliat the majorit}^ of her people, in their 
loeal capacity, and acting under the sixth article of the Ordinance 
of 1787, should decide her qiiestions of legal servitude. No body 
of people in the nation questioned the legality of this provision, 
The constitutional convention which framed this provision num- 
bered among its members some of the most able men who ever sat 
in a convention ; many of them were lawyers of ability and standing 
from older States. One of them. Judge George H. Williams, was 



"^Bancroft's Works, v. 29, 438. 
i"U. S. Ch. and Cons., 1489. 
i"U. S. Ch. and Cons., 1506. 



00 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

afterward attorne3'-general of the United States under President 
Grant; and as I write his voice yet echoes in praise of his co-laborers 
in that conventio.n. Another, Judge McBride, is yet upon the bench 
in the State of Washington. No one questioned the legality of the 
submission of this question to the vote of the people of the Terri- 
tory, and there is no doubt that if on vote the majority had favored 
slaver}^, it would have been incorporated in the Oregon fundamental 
State law, thus giving another indubitable proof that everywhere 
and all the time the Ordinance of the thirteenth of July, seventeen 
hundred and eighty-seven, as interpreted and applied under the 
Constitution, left slavery subject to the will of the local majority, 
untrammeled by Congressional interference. 

It now remains to go back and see the local slavery history of the 
Northwest."' The Ordinance of 1787 did not touch the existing 
slavery. The slaves already held by the French, British, and other 
settlers in the Northwest Territory, were secured as property to the 
masters either under authority of Congress in its construction of 
the Ordinance, Jay's Treaty, or the treaty with France, all of which 
guaranteed to "settlers their property of every kind and protection 
therein, which applied to slaves as well as other property," so Mr. 
Hinsdale correctly says."^ The slaves, most of whom were negroes, 
the remainder being enslaved Indians, thus secured to their owners, 
had been early introduced into this region by the French, who had 
settled in various places up and down the ]\Ii'ssissippi valley from 
Canada to New Orleans. Negro slavery had existed in Canada since 
1688, when it was introduced from the West Indies by government 
officials by consent of the King of France. Many of the settlers, es- 
pecially those at Detroit in what is now Michigan, owned slaves 
from a remote Indian tribe, the Pawnees."' "The Pawnee slaves 
■were captives taken in war and sold at low prices" to these first set- 
tlers in that part of Canada now belonging to the United States."' 
The French authorities thought that the negro in Canada would 
be a remedy for "the scarcity and dearness of labor" ;"' but climate 



"'An interesting account of the condition of tlie early Northwest slaves Is 
given by John W. Monette, Hist. Miss. Valley, v. 1. p. 187. 

""The Old Northwest. 330 ; Dunn, Indiana, 252-3 : Justin Winsor. The West- 
ern Movement, 288. 

"'Burnet, Notes (Cincinnati, 1847). 282 n. et seq. 

issparkman. The Old Regime in Canada, 454-5. 

"»Ib. 



i 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 89 

scon robbed the slave-owner of all profit in his slaves;''" and so the 
parliament of Upper Canada, in 1793, provided for gradual eman- 
cipation. But in the country to the south of Canada slavery, at 
the time that part of the country passed under the jurisdiction of 
the United States, was not only then yet legal, but was regarded as 
necessary. The French slave-holding element of this Northwest 
country was comparatively numerous. No representative of the 
new people was present when the Congress of the thirteen States 
undertook to formulate a government for them. The wishes of this 
new citizenship were neither known nor asked. The temporary gO'V- 
erimient the Congress gave the people, so they were correctly as- 
sured, did not touch existing slave property, but when it was realized 
that under the law as it then was, children yet to be born of slave pa- 
rents would be free, these French citizens began to feel that they 
had been deprived of the power to hold property which was the 
natural increase of legal ownership, and that without represen- 
tation, consent, or compensation. This feeling led to the first pe- 
tition with reference to slavery which went to Congress from the 
Northwest Territory. This prayer was dated at the French town 
of Kaskaskia., in what is now the State of Illinois, January 12, 1796. 
It stated that the Ordinance had destroyed vested rights without the 
consent of the governed, and, justifying its request upon this and 
the further ground that the scarcity of labor made slavery necessary, 
the petition prayed the removal of all restrictions. It was signed by 
Jolin Edgar, born in Ireland ; "William Morrison, of New England ; 
William St. Clair, cousin of the governor of the Territory from 
Scotland, by way of Massachusetts, and John Du Moulin, a Swiss.''" 
They professed to^ act for two counties in the Territory, the greater 
majority of the citizens in which were French. Dunn says, "It is 
unquestionable that what they asked was desired by the people of 
those counties." Governor St. Clair, formerly of Massachusetts, 
forwarded the petition to Congress."' 

May 12, 1796, an adverse report was made by the Congressional 
committee to whom the petition had been referred, and thus the 
matter rested until 1799. In her deed to so much of the territory 



^'ODunn, Indiana, 257. 
i"Dunn, Indiana. 287. 
i«2Annals 4th Congress, 1 sess., 1171 ; Am. State Papers : Public Lands, v. I., 



90 XORTHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

north of the Ohio as Virginia formerly claimed, she reserved a 
considerable tract of land in the neighborhood of the Miami riyei-, 
\vhich land she offered to those of her sons who had participated in 
and survived the Eevolutionary War. August 10, 1790, Congress had 
granted these Virginians their lands and designated one tract north 
of the Ohio."' In this year of 1790, on February 4th, the first legis- 
lature of the Northwest Territory convened. Before this body these 
Southern soldiers who were entitled to the bounty lands presented 
two petitions praying the Territorial legislature to enact some law 
by which those of them who held slaves might carry them upon their 
new lands. The action of this legislative body with reference to 
these petitions shows (1) the legislature did not doubt its right to 
legislate so as to annul the prohibitive provision of the Ordinance ; 
(2) this body had regard to the economic interests of their constitu- 
ency in determining their actidns; (3) when they thought slavery 
would retard immigration, they fell behind the Ordinance simply 
because so long as they failed or refused to act, the Ordinance proved 
prohibitive against the introduction of new slaves. Several members 
of this legislature were Southern, — Virginia alone having furnished 
seven. Some of them were then yet slaveholders ;'" all of them were 
"intelligent, substantial men" ;"" some of them were graduates of the 
best schools then in America ; and they were not "the mountaineers, 
the men of the foothills, and uplands who lived in what were called 
the backwater counties," as we might be led to believe from what 
]\Ir. Eoosevelt says in speaking generally of the Southern immigra- 
tion of the Northwest States."' But "a majority of the members of 
this legislature" were JSTorthern men."' When the first petition 
from the Virginia ex-soldiers came before them, that body unani- 
mously declined to entertain the prayer. They said the prayer of 
the petition was incompatible with the Ordinance,"' This alone 
rather loolcs as though they regarded the Ordinance as at least un- 
changeable by a Territorial legislature. But the fact is, as I shall 
show more fully hereafter, this assembly almost entirely repre- 



"'Annals of Congress, 1 Cong., v. 2, 2300; Pub. Laws of the U. S. (Little. 
Brown & Co., '55). 598. 
i"Dunn, Indiana, 200. 
is'P.urnet, Notes, 280. 
"«Thos. H. Benton, 2, 3. 
'"Dunn. Indiana. 289. 
i8sst. Clair Papers, v. 2, 448, n. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 91 

sented the Ohio section, and it became a question as to whether 
slavery would not keep more settlers away from than it would bring 
into the Territory. So on considering the first petition they con- 
cluded that "whatever its immediate advantages it would ultimately 
retard the settlement and check the prosperity of the Territory, by 
making labor less reputable, and creating feelings and habits un- 
friendly to the simplicity and industry they desired to encourage 
and perpetuate."""' But when in November of the same year the 
second petition came from the same men, this time asking for 
slavery under reasonable restrictions, and doubtless in view of the 
fact that a large majority of the French west of the Miami at this 
time "favoured the introduction of slaves,""" and also a large New- 
England element in Eoss county ;"' this legislature, with its North- 
ern majority, found in the increase of immigration thus seeking to 
enter their borders, such a consideration as induced them to change 
their first position. They showed plainly that they did not regard 
the prohibition of the Ordinance as forever insurmoimtable. 
They appointed a committee and directed them — not to inquire into 
the advisability of slavery — but to prepare a bill "declaring the ad- 
mission of persons of coIot by indenture" — which meant nothing 
less than the most complete servitude. This was done late in the 
session, and the committee did not get this proposed bill before the 
assembly before adjournment ; yet, as Dunn remarks, "the appoint- 
ment of this committee indicates a willingness on the part of the 
legislature to permit the introduction of negroes in a servile condi- 
tion until some other consideration intervened.""^ 

This brings us to the first division of the Territory. It will be 
necessary to follow the action of each division after it became dis- 
tinct from the mother territory. 

Leaving for the present the Ohio part, which retained the name 
of Northwest Territory until it became a State, let us follow the 
section to the west, after the division, called the Indiana Territory. 

The severance of the Ohio section left the French largely in the 
majority in the Indiana Territory. Very soon after the Territorial 
division this element again petitioned Congress praying for the re- 



"'Burnet, Notes, 307. 

""Dunn. Indiana, 291. 

"iSt. Clair Papers, v. 2. 588 : Dunn, Indiana. 292. 

"2indiana, 293. 



92 NOETHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

moval of the prohibition against bringing new slaves to their conn- 
try, and that the children born in the Territory of such slaves should 
serve for a term of years before attaining their freedom. "This pe- 
tition had 270 signers, chiefly French. Of the more prominent 
English and American signers the majority were ISTorthem Feder- 
alists.'"" It was presented to the Senate only, January 23, 1807, was 
immediately tabled, and received no further notice. 

This failure caused the petitioners to call upon Harrison, of Vir- 
ginia, their governor, just as they had in tlie first instance pe- 
titioned Congress through St. Clair, of Massachusetts, to seek re- 
dress for them. Harrison called a convention of delegates from the 
several sections of his Territory. When they met at Vincennes in 
December, 1802, it was found that not all of them favored the in- 
denture of new slaves,"* but a majority of them did. The opposi- 
tion came from those delegates who were Southern men. Like 
tlieir associates, they "ranked among the most intelligent and pub- 
lic-spirited men in the Territory.""' Cooley says the people of In- 
diana Territory invited the early attention of Governor Harrison 
tx) their "inability under the Ordinance to acquire and hold slaves," 
and then adds: "many of them had come from the slave-holding 
States and were accustomed to slave labor; and it seemed to them 
a hardship that they should be deprived of it.""° This is liable to 
make a wrong impression; the Southern emigration generally were 
less behind this convention than the Northern, and the French ele- 
ment more than either. In the convention itself the New England 
and foreign born delegates were in the majority, while those SontJi- 
ern delegates who favored slavery were about, if not entirely, nega- 
tived by the anti-slaver}'- Southern delegates. This left the Sonth- 
ern influence of the convention practically a nullity. Among their 
various requests in the petition which the majority prepared, the one 
which concerns us here is that in which they asked that the slave 
prohibition contained in the Ordinance "may be suspended for the 
Term of Ten Years and then be again in force.""' What were the 
grounds assigned for this request? They set out that the Ordi- 



"3Dunn, IncBana, 298-9. 

i"Dunn, Indiana, 304. 

"'lb., 303. 

"«Hist. of Mich., 134. 

i"Dunii, Indiana, 306 ; Am. State Papers : Misc., v. 1, 485. 



NORTHERN- REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 93 

nance had driven numerons citizens to the Spanish side of the Mis- 
sissippi, — a movement which had been greatly augmented by the 
meddlesomeness of an unscrupulous man from New England."* 
The petition was forwarded to Congress in a formal letter by Gov- 
ernor Harrison. Februaiy 8, 1803, the House referred it to John 
Eandolph, of Virginia; Griswald, of Coiunecticut ; E. Williams, of 
North Carolina; Morris, of Vermont, and Hoge, of Pennsylvania. 
March 2d this committee reported adversely, assigning as their rea- 
sons (1) that slave labor was not needed in the new Territory; 
(2) "that this labor, demonstrably the dearest of any, can only be 
employed in the cultivation of products . . . not known to that 
quarter of the United States" ; ( 3 ) the tempoTary privation of labor 
would find ample remuneration at no very distant day."' It is im- 
portant to observe that this Congressional committee had a North- 
ern majority, and that it assigned the economic objection that slave 
labor was not profitable on Northern soil as their reason for not 
recommending that it go there. It is well to remember, too, that 
in the new Territory Northern laborers had almost a monopoly of 
the labor market, and were unwilling, as well as the non-slave-hold- 
ing laborers who went from the South, to come in competition with 
slave labor. Between Congressmen and petitioners it was a ques- 
tion of expediency.''" The existing politics of the Territory were 
largely Federalist; the North being the stronghold oi the Federal 
party, it was not to the Federal interest to hold out inducements 
for Southern men, who were usually non-Federalists, to move to the 
Territory. The report was read only a day prior to the adjourn- 
ment of Congress, and so no vote was reached. 

December 15, 1803, this petition was referred to a new committee, 
all of whom were from the South. They reported advising the sus- 
pension of the prohibitive clause for ten years, and that it be made 
legal to introduce slaves "born within the United States," provided 
the States from which they were removed "did not permit the intro- 
duction of slaves from foreign countries." They recommended that 
the descendants of all such slaves should become free, — males at the 
age of twenty-five, females at the age of twenty-one. It was alleged 



i"St. Clair Papers ; Dunn, Indiana, 305. 

""Dunn. Indiana, 308 ; Hinsdale, Old Northwest. 342 ; Am. State Papers : 
Public Lands, v. 1, 146. 

i«"Dillon, Hist. Indiana, 410-14. 



94 NOIiTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

that such a measure would relieve tlie labor conditions which at that 
time were embarrassing to many settlers ; it would have established 
gradual emancipation for the descendants of man}^ Southern slaves. 
So far as its legal effect was concerned, it would not have made a sin- 
gle new slave. But Congress turned a deaf ear, and no vote was ever 
taken on this report."' So obnoxious to the people of the Territory 
did this immovability of CongTCSs become"' that the public senti- 
ment forced the Governor a.nd Judges, who were then the semi- 
legislative power, to endeavor to devise a means of overcoming the 
Ordinance. Under their provision they secured a means of intro- 
ducing slave laborers under what purported to be "an agreement" 
under the common law, whereby the servant could be compelled to 
perform any "agi-eement" for service in the Territory. Witliout 
consent of the master, no one could remunerate such servant, under 
penalty of "thirty-nine lashes at the public whipping-post.'"^ 

There was a petition in 1803 from the French in the Illinois 
country asking Congi-ess to annex them to the newly-acquired 
Louisiana countr}^, but it added nothing new to their slavery posi- 
^ tion.'" 

^ In 1805 Michigan (Wayne county) was detached from Indiana. 

.^ In this year, what was called the second degree of the Indiana Ter- 
%^ ritory having been reached, her first legislature met. The first ses- 
sion of this body was composed of twelve membere, seven represen- 
tatives, and five councilmen (corresponding to the State senate). 
Of the Southerners, Davis Floyd,, Joseph Beggs, and William Biggs, 
two Marylanders. Canada and New England furnished the birth- 
place or former home of the others, one of whom was bom abroad. 
Of the Southerners Davis Foyd, Joseph Beggs, and William Biggs, 
all of Virginia, were opposed to the introduction of slavery and in 
every way were anti-slavery men."' Two of these Southern men 
were able lawyers, and Beggs was one of the brothers whom Dunn 
has pronounced "men of great strength, of great heart, and of great 
brain.""" Our present concern is to see the attitude of this body 



\ 



J«Am. State Papers : Misc., v. 1, 387. 

is^Dunn, Indiana, 312. 

18'Dunn, Indiana, 315. 

i8»Dunn, Indiana, 317. 

18'Dunn, Indiana, 337, 356, 367. 

"(■Indiana, 356. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 95 



towards slavery and tlie prohibition in the Ordinance. They 
the famous law for "indenturing negroes," which provided that 
slaves over fifteen years old might be brought to the Territory; if 
such slaves agreed to remain, they might be held in servitude for 
life in no way differing from slaves in the several Southern States. 
If they refused to be "indentured," they could be forcibly returned 
to where slavery was unquestioned as to its legality. Some formali- 
ties as to registration were prescribed which in no way affected the 
servant's status. This made a complete servitude. It legalized the 
introduction of new slaves, making only the formal matter of regis- 
tration and a pretense of the negroes' consent a prerequisite. With 
the existing slaves it was a question of service in the new home or 
inciir the master's displeasure and continue in the South. Both the 
Territorial and afterward the State courts of Illinois and Indiana 
recognized its validity. Some of the cases, notably one in 183G, 
laid stress upon the point that "the indenture must have been in 
conformity with the Territorial law." "It was also proceeded under 
as existing law in 1844."'"' It was never questioned by Congress. 
Slaves were held in Indiana and Illinois for many years after each 
had become States. Children of these indentured slaves were being 
held in Illinois at the time of the ratification of her constitution in 
1848. Hinsdale puts the date at 1846 or 1847, and says some were 
found in bondage in Michigan even later."^ Dunn says, "This act 
at the time was satisfactory to a majority of the people.'"'" 

In those early days roads were few ; many settlements were hun- 
dreds of miles from the place where indentured servants must be 
registered, and so the citizens and some of the legislators desired 
Congress to remove the Ordinance restraint, which would have made 
the formalities prescribed by the Territorial authority unnecessary. 
Accordingly a petition Avas forwarded to Congress, sigTied by part 
ot' the legislature. It had seven names — two of them Southern 
men, three Northern men, and one born abroad who had come to 
Indiana by way of the ISTorth."^ Local questions concerning the di- 
vision of the Territory had arisen; Illinois desired separation be- 
cause it Avas insisted that there could be no "harmony of political 



"^Dunn, Indiana, 335, and the cases there cited. 

"SQld Northwest, 341 ; Edward's Hist, of IH. ; Campbell's Pol. Hist. Mich., 246. 

""Indiana, 330. 

^""Am. State Papers : Misc.. v. 1, 485. 



96 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

interests between the two sections/' A strong petition from the 
Illinois people, having 350 signers, some of whom had overcome 
their antipathy to slavery in their desire for division, was forwarded 
to Congress. An additional memorial was presented to the Ho'usc 
of Kepresentatives January 17, 1806. A committee representing 
the several townships, most of them opposed to General Harrison's 
administration, met, denoimced the indenture law, and prepared to 
memorialize CongTCSS to interfere ; but when they remembered that 
the "masses were in favor of the indenture of slavery" they changed 
their front and '''substituted a fervent appeal for either a condi- 
tional or an absolute revocation of the sixth" article of the Ordi- 
nance.'" All these petitions, together witli prior petitions and re- 
jDorts thereon, including the petition of the Vincennes convention 
of 1803, in the House of Representatives were referred to a new 
committee, of which Garnett, of Virginia, was chairman. He had 
ai-sociated with him three Northerners, two otlaer Southern men, 
and Park, the Indiana representative. Park was a young lawyer 
■^vlio had gone from his native home in New Jersey to the Territory 
in 1801."" This gave the North a majority'- of the committee. They 
reported in favor of a suspension for ten years, legalizing during 
that time the introduction of slaves born within the United 
States."^ No vote was reached upon this report, and concerning 
these petitions there was no further CongTessional action. 

Po]3ular clamors, some for Statehood, others for division, now 
bore down upon the legislature from every quarter of the Territory. 
So when that body met in 1806 they passed a unanimous resolution 
asking Congress for a suspension of the prohibition."* And not 
tJds only; they further tightened the indenture bonds. Some ques- 
tion had arisen as to whether indentured slaves could be sold as 
property under execution. This legislature declared such slaves to 
be property subject to execution and sale. More than, this : they 
enacted a law forbidding slaves to be as much as ten miles from the 
mastei*'s home without his pass ; if so found, a justice of the peace, 
before whom any one could take the delinquent, could order him 
punished "by not more than twenty-iive lashes." It was further 



i"Dunn, Indiana, 344. 

"2Dunn. Indiana, 322. 

"^Am. State Papers : Misc., v. 1, 450. 

'"Am. State Papers . Misc., v. 1, 467. 



XORTHEEK REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 97 

provided that if ''a slave went iTpon the plantation of a person other 
than his master, such person might punish the offender with ten 
lashes.""" Yet these laws were passed b}'- a body whose Council had 
but one Southern member, a.nd Avhose Northern majority could have 
effectually barred any law. In common with similar laws in the 
Older liorth, as I have elsewhere shown, they show that the South- 
ern people were not peculiar in the restrictive laws which regulated 
the movements of their slaves. The more numerous the slave body 
and the greater the outside influence as a disturbing power, the 
more rigid the restraining laws of necessity became. 

This last petition was referred by the lower House of Congress 
to a committee composed of four Nortliern and three Southern 
men. This i^Torthem majority, representing Xew Jersey, Massa- 
chusetts, and Pennsylvania, reported favoring removing all prohi- 
bition for a period of ten years. But upon this report no s'ote or 
other action was ever had.^"* 

Throughout all this time in the Territory there was even greater 
Northern, pro-slavery cooperation than that given from the South. 
Many ISTorthem citizens, since they had already come in contact 
with slavery in the new home, advocated its further introduction. 
Did they find the institution a source of revenue? Did they hope 
tc perpetuate slavery? Let the history they made answer. In the 
petition, which is practically representative of the others, received 
by the United States Senate January 21, 1807, we find the peti- 
tioners amxious for Statehood; they had not had the opportunity 
to attract emigrants which we shall see Ohio had enjoyed. The 
existing slavery, little of which had tainted the Ohio section, was 
being protected ; whatever of social-labor odium there was, was al- 
ready in their midst. They thought that if all restrictions were re- 
moved more white settlers would join them; and thus aid. they set 
forth, the sooner to secure those "political rights which distinguish 
the Americans from the citizens and subjects of othe.- Govern- 
ments." i They frankly said to Congress that in their country 
slaverv was an economic failure — which is now admitted to have 
l)een true — and they gave the correct reasons, saying that "from the 
situation, soil, climate, and products of the Territory it is not be- 



i!«Dunn, Indiana, 349. 
1961b., 3.54. 



98 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

lieved that the number of slaves T^-oaild ever bear such proportion 
to the white population as to endanger the internal peace and pros- 
perity of the country/^"' 

In the petition of tlie House of Eepresentativcs and Legislative 
Council, which did not reach Congress until November 13, 1807, 
the legislature called attention to the action of the Vincennes con- 
vention, the Territorial slavery laws already in force, and the sev- 
eral petitions previously before Congress, and said tha^t "as the citi- 
zens of the Territory decidedly favor the to ; oration of slavery, the 
Legislative Council and the House of Eepresentatives consider it 
incumbent on them briefly to state, on behalf of themselves and 
tlieir constituents, the reasons which have influeuced them in favor 
of the measure" providing for removing tlie prohibition. They then 
call attention to the fact that this request for removal of all restric- 
tions is "not a proposition of liberty or slavery. Slavery now exists 
in the United States," they continue, "and in I'ais Territory. It 
was the crime of England, . . . and now becomes a question, merely 
o ^ policy, in what way the slaves are to be disposed of that they may 
be least dangerous to the commimity, most useful to their pro- 
prietors, and by which tJieir situation may be most ameliorated." 
Then they set out that on January 1st, then next followiug, the 
Federal law prohibiting the importation of new slaves would go 
into effect, and add, "Hence, it is evident the proposed toleration 
will not increase the number in the United States." This was an 
entirely logical and legitimate reasoning. No one then conjectured 
that New England would defy the national prohibitive import laws 
for fifty years. The '.-'etitioners called attention to the crowded con- 
dition of the slave Siiites, and then reaffirmed their immunity from 
danger of overcrowding or of a continuance of long slavery in their 
section, "owing to the situation of the Territory, its climate and 
products." In proof of tlieir contention, tliey cite Kentucky and 
Tennessee. How truly they argued the after history of each proves. 
The larger areas of both States proved unadapttd to slave labor 
even down to the Civil War. They might have added to their 
proof the northwestern part of Virginia, — a large area where 
slavery had been legal for more than r hundred years, — n^hich was 
so unsuited to slave labor that it became the unconstitutional State 



i"Am. state Papers : Misc., v., 1, 467 



NORTHERN" REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 99 

of West Virginia as a comiDlinient to wliat its situation, climate, 
soil, and products had done for it. Hence, it was argued that some 
additional settlers would be induced io come if encumbering for- 
malities were removed, the Territory -w^ould soonei become a State, 
and the few slaves brought in by the Southern emigrants would be 
placed in a position either to become free themselves or to trans- 
mit that privilege to their children. 

Accompanying this resolution we now have under review, was a 
resolution and prayer by a "'numerous meeting of the citizens of 
Clark county . . . (agreeably to notice previously given),^' which 
had met October 10, 1807. This gathering expressed the desire that 
'•Congress will suspend any legislative act on this subject until we 
shall, by the Constitution, be admitted into the Union and have a 
right to adopt such a Constitution in this respect, as may comport 
with the wishes of a majority of the citizens.'" "As to the interests 
of the Territory, a variety of opinions exist," they also declare ; and 
vfhile stating their opposition to holding slaves, without expressing 
an opinion as to whether slavery would help or retard Territorial 
growth, they simply pray Congress to leave the matter v.here it is 
'•'until the constitutional number of citizens of this Territory shall 
exercise that right" of final decision in forming their constitu- 
tions."' This was the true doctrine of the Constitution, that "the 
power of forming Government for and the regulation of the inter- 
nal concerns" be left to each State — using the words of the Vir- 
ginia Colonial Legislature when instructing her delegates in 1775 
to the Continental Congress."' This doctrine and this prayer came 
from the opponents to the admission of slaves. It came from a 
gathering composed of immigrants from both ISTorth and South; it 
was a declaration that Northern settlers opposed to slavery believed 
that the question was one which the majority of the bona fide citi- 
zens should settle; and not that they should do so only, but this 
declaration by a representative gathering is additional evidence 
that the vast majority of citizens in the Northwest believed that 
the Ordinance of 1787, construed under the national Constitution, 
guaranteed to each Territory or State the right to regulate, unfet- 
tered by national or other outside influence, the domestic -nstitution 



"8Am. State Papers : Misc., v. 1, 486. 
i99Am. Archi^^es, 4tli series, v. 6, 1524. 



100 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION 

of slavery. That Congress actually allowed this to be done, "thus 
setting an example for the government of all future territories," 
let me briefly shoAv. 

January, 1808, before the House of Eepresentatives, and Novem- 
ber, 1807, in the Senate, petitions and memorials called attention 
to the indenture law, and asked Congress to nullify it.""" Mr. Dunn 
points out that it was not neglect that Congress failed -o take any 
notice of the law or to declare it void, and that unquesti'-^nabiy Con- 
gress meant to leave the matter to be settled by tlie peopl: at the 
ballot — a doctrine which, in the Kansas-Nebraska fight in 1854, 
came to be kno^Ti as "squatter sovereignty.'' 

When, September, 1808, the Territorial legislatare again met, 
fifteen slavery petitions from all parts of the Territory hurriedly 
came before the legislative body. "Of these eleven vere against any 
legislative action for the admission of slavery" ; and of all the sign- 
ers, there was a majority of six hundred against slavery. Xow, 
mark the change in the legislature ! Slavery had been tried ; the 
people are reversed in their sentiments. Let us look for the causes. 

In the Territorial House RepreLsentative Johnson, a Virginian, 
an able lawyer, and up to this time a strong advocate of slavery, 
and one of the men who helped to enact the indenture law, as cliair- 
man of a select committee presented to the House a report, which 
Dunn says "is entitled to rank among the ablest, if not the ahlest. 
State paper ever produced in Indiana."'"^ It declares that the 
"most flagrant abuse" was made of the indenture law, and that the 
slaves held under it were so completely subjugated that "the con- 
dition of these unfortunate persons is not only involuntarily servi- 
tude, but downright slavery." Then follows the important feature: 
The report declares that free labor produced a condition of superior 
agriculture ; l)uilt manufactories, roads, bridges, etc., far in ad- 
vance of anything that could be produced under slave labor. The 
report was adopted without opposition in the House. A bill re- 
pealing the indenture law was passed, signed, and sent to the Coun- 
cil. Of the members of the Council then in attendance there were 
but three — Jones, Bond, and Fisher — two from the North and one, 
Bond, from the South. Here was a Northern majority anrl in its 

^ooDunn, Indiana, 362-3. 
^"Indiana. 371. 



• NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 101 

hands an opportunity to destroy the local slavery law — a chance to 
restore to its full force the Ordinance. What did they do ? • It was 
expected that Illinois would soon be severed from Indiana, and in 
its movement westward the anti-slavery sentiment had not yet cap- 
tured all the Illinois French and some Americans. These three 
men were looking to the Illinois country for future political pre- 
ferment, and "they had too ninch regard for their politica,l future 
in Illinois to repeal the indenture law; and so it was saved as a 
rich legacy to our sister State by these three men," says Indiana's 
impartial historian.'"' 

The report adopted by the House, based upon a sudden change 
of popular sentiment, also assigns a political reason for all future 
suppression of slavery. It says they must look to Few England for 
the greater number of immigrants; and political antipathy to the 
South thus early manifests itself. It was inisisted that slave-hold- 
ers had ample territory in Missouri and to the south, and it was 
argued that to admit new slaves to the Northwest would be an 
vnequal distribution of territory ; and by the admission of slaves to 
Indiana, they argue, "the comparative importance of the Middle and 
Eastern States, the real strength of the Union, is greatly reduced." 
For this political reason they insist that their own pro-slavery law 
should be repealed, and that "it is inexpedient to petitioii. Congress 
for a modification of that part of the Ordinance relative to 
'slavery."""' When it was thought that slavery would promote im- 
migration and relieve the labor market, these same people intro- 
duced slaves under a legal, valid local laM' — completely igMormg the 
Congi-essional Ordinance. When it was demonstrated that they 
had nothing to lose, when slavery had been tried and proven un- 
adapted to the country, a reversal of sentiment quickly follows 
As the JSTorthwest begins to co^me under the influence of Few Eng- 
land political leaders the Ordinance becomes a useful political 
scapegoat. The growing feeling of a oneness with Few England 
as against the South is more forcibly seen when we remember that 
they used almost indentically the same language as that of John 
Quincy x^dams, of Massachusetts, when, in opposing the purchase of 
Louisiana, he said, "One inevitable consequence of the annexation 



^''^Dunn, Indiana, 376. 
^''■'Ib., 374. 



102 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, ' 

would be to diminish the relative weight and influence of the North- 
ern section/'""* 

The third General Assembly of Indiana contained but four pro- 
slavery men. They met in 1810 and immediately repealed the in- 
denture law, and restored the force of the Ordinance of 1787. This, 
of course, did not affect the status of slaves introduced while the 
law was in force. 

Let me close this all-too-brief examination of slavery in Indiana, 
in the words of J. P. Dunn, secretary of the Indiana Historical 
Society, writing in American Commonwealth Serife^, edited by 
Horace E. Schudder, of Harvard University: "We do not go beyond 
the bounds of our State to give praise for the final solution of our 
local slavery question, for Congress put the solution upon the men 
of Indiana, and they worked it out on Indiana soil. For the privi- 
lege of solving it, under the Ordinance, without the interference 
of Congress, our thanks go abroad, but to no section.'"'" 

Turning now to Illinois. Before the repeal of the indenture law 
the Illinois country had been erected into a separate Territory, and 
hence it was unaffected by the repeal. As we have seen, in the ear- 
lier days slavery was much more popular in the Illinois country 
and continued to be for a longer period of time than in Indiana. 
But in the end, with her slavery proved of no more economic value, 
and hence had increased slowly. In 1820, when the old indenture 
law was yet in force there, Illinois had only 917 slaves.^"" 

In 1822, Hinsdale and other historians tell us, there were practi- 
cally no politics in Illinois, and "elections turned largely on local 
questions and personal preferences."""^ In the gubernatorial race 
the pro-slavery men had 5,302 votes against 3,332 of all others. 
But by 1824, after a bitter and exciting campaign, in which the 
chief question was a proposition to strengt.hen the old indenture 
law passed while this section was a part of Indiana, and to make the 
introduction of new slaves constitutional, out of 11,772 votes, the 
pro-slavery men had only 4,950 against 6,322.'°' Slavery in Illinois 



2»*Sparks, Expansion of the Am. People, 201, n. 
ix'sindiana, 444. 
so^Dunn, Indiana, 406. 
=<"Hinsdale Old Northwest, 350. 
2»8Hinsdale, Old Northwest. 352. 



NORTHERX KEBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 103 

had j^roven an economic failure, and by 1830 she had only 747 
slaves. In proportion as her slave labor surrendered to improved 
methods and intelligent competition, her anti-slavery sentiment 
continued to increase, and by 1848 her new constitution put an end 
to negro slavery within her State jurisdiction. For forty-three 
years — ^almost half a century — the slave provision in the Ordinance 
of 1787 had been void as to this part of the Northwest, and a com- 
plete form of slavery was legal, — a slavery which differed in no es- 
sential from that in any Southern State, except nominally its he- 
redity was limited. 

Whatever of restriction the Ordinance applied to any '^ne State 
formed from the Northwest it applied to each and all — their ab- 
solute equality with reference to each other is in.^isoutab'e. Since 
the Ordinance itself provided for changes and alterations of itself 
mutually made, and also for passing the Northwest States under 
the full protection of whatever legal form of government should 
succeed the Confederation (for at the time of the enactment of the 
Ordinance it was unmistakably plain that the Confederation was 
no more than temporary), then whatever po'sition or exercise of 
Jurisdiction the States took with reference to any question, such 
as the regulation of domestic and local slavery, if Congress per- 
mitted unquestioned this exercise of jurisdiction, there was a 
mutual alteration even if the Ordinance had included slavery under 
the imlimited "forever," because immediately after the expression, 
"forever remain unalterable," it said, "unless by common consent." 

Under the Constitaition Congress and the Northwest Territory and 
States by their solemn acts mutually construed the Ordinance bind- 
ing as to slavery no longer than any political division took upon itself 
the responsibility of exercising jurisdiction over that question. If 
the Ordinance forbade slavery jurisdiction to the Northwest States, 
as generally claimed, then it forbade all kinds and degrees of negro 
slaver}^ ; hence, any local law whatever, having the sanction of Con- 
gress, which made a slavery in any form, no matter if it purported 
to be a servitude by consent of one already under the duress of 
recognized bondage, was a mutual alteration of the Ordinance. 

By Art. VI. of her constitution in 1818 Illinois confirmed all 
slavery existing pursuant to and by virtue of the indenture law, 
thus giving her most solemn sanction to its validity; as to the 



104 NORTHERN" REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

future, she repealed the law, and established gradual emancipa- 
tion for those thereafter born of the slaves then held under the 
indenture law, thus giving another indubitable proof of its validity 
and legally binding force. Armed with this constitution, Illinois 
knocked for admission to the Union "upon an equal footing with 
the original State's in all respects whatsoever^' — one condition 
which the Ordinance had provided for this very occasion. Con- 
gress heard her knock, invited her in, carefully inspected the con- 
stitution which her people had solemnly ratified, and on Decem- 
ber 3, 1818, gave assent to what she had done, thus completing 
the mutuality, in a resolution in which it was declared that the 
"Constitution and State government so framed is republican and 
in conformity to the principlete of the articles of compact between 
the original States and the people and States and territories north- 
west of the river Ohio"""' — the "articles of compact" being none 
other than those of the Ordinance of 178,7. Excepting the ques- 
tion of fugitive slaves, and their importation after a specified time, 
the Constitution of the Union had left the regulation of slavery 
with the respective States; Indiana interpreted the Ordinance 
under the Constitution to guarantee her thite right; Congress gave 
not alone her tacit consent, but at last made, in admitting Illinois, 
this explicit declaration. Congress thus explicitly declared the local 
slave laws of Illinois, which created new slavery while protecting 
the original, actually to be in conformity to the articles of com- 
pact as contained in the Ordinance, and unquestionably in full ac- 
cord with the Constitution. 

Yet in the face of the constant decrease of pro-slavery sentiment, 
and with full knowledge of tlicir local control of this domestic in- 
stitution, New Englanders had begun to intrude upon the South, 
and early in the first part of the last century settlers from New 
England then living in Illinois opened an "underground route" 
and "began to assi'st slaves from the South into Canada.'"'" 

Neither the Ordinance of 1787, the North, the South, nor Con- 
gress saved Indiana or Illinois from slavery. Their anti-slavery 
sentiment was a product of the native soil ; a majority of the peo- 



208U. S. Ch. and Cons., 445. 446, 449. 
""Sparks, Expansion of the Am. People, 355- 



NORTHERX BEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 105 

pie at last found no profit in slave labor; nature for them, as for 
the older ISTortli, solved the slave problem. The same inexorable 
natural law, working in harmony with man's economic nature, 
which drove slavery from these two portions of the original North- 
west Territory, had, for reasons now to be indicated, even earlier 
operated similarly in the detached portions : Ohio and Michigan. 



VI. 

THE NEGRO AND OHIO— ORDINANCE 

OF 1787. 

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS REGULATING SLAVERY IN OHIO AND MISSOURI. 

The history of the slave question in Oliio is most fruitful as a 
source from which to interpret the ante-bellum Northern and 
Southern slavery positions. 

Since it is claimed that to the Ohio Company, a body of New 
Englanders in search of special favors, we are indebted for the re- 
quest for slave-prohibition in the Ordinance of 1787, at this place 
it will be well to examine a little more fully the causes which led 
to this famous proviso or so-called compact."^ 

Few things have been more overestimated as to effect than tliis 
the sixth article in the act of Congress which formulated a Terri- 
torial government for the Northwest, known to history as the Ordi- 
nance of the 13th of July, 1787. It has been accorded a place in 
slave history, and consequently one of no little importance in the 
history of our country, which it does not deserve. The motives 
which prompted its attempted regulation of slavery have been va- 
riously, and perhaps with as little accuracy, estimated. Black in 
his hifetory of Ohio insists that Jefferson and Virginia had economic 
and selfish motives for the anti-slavery provisions in the various 
measures urged with reference to the Northwest; and, hence, that 
the South was similarly actuated in supporting the Ordinance of 
1787. Whatever these reasons were, there was certainly no parti- 
san, sectional, political motive. The Ordinance which Jefferson 
proposed in 1784 was meant to prohibit slavery in all territory 
north of thirty-first parallel.''' Of the Southern States this terri- 
tory is now covered by Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Ken- 



2"Por a clear proof of the Southern authorship of the Ordinance, see Benton's 
Thirty Years' View, Vol. I., 134 et seq. 

2i2Schouler, History of the U. S., Vol. I., 112. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 107 

tucky. Mr. Eoosevelt takes pretty mxich the same view of the Or- 
dinance of 1787 as that advanced by Mr. Black. Mr. Eoosevelt 
says of the Ordinance that "it was in its result a deadly stroke 
against the traffic in and ownership of human beings, and the blow 
was dealt by Southern men, to whom all honor should ever be 
given.'"" I have already discussed the extent of the "blow." He 
further says, "The prohibition was brought about by the Ohio 
Company."'" His tlieory is that Congress wanted to sell these new 
lands, which is correct, and that the Company who wanted to buy 
"were determined to keep slavery" out of the Territ.or}^ But why ? 
All through his writings he admits that there was "at that time no 
opposition from consciousness of any wrong in slave-holding.""" 
Whatever Jefferson's and the South's reason for this prohibition, 
to my mind that of New England, granting that she was behind the 
move, is clear. This Ohio Company were New England men; at 
the head was General Eufus Putnam, of Eevolutionary fame, and 
cousin of Israel Putnam. They had organized to speculate in 
land.'" They were Federalist in politics, and men who had seen 
that negro slavery at home was not profitable. They were not 
slave-holders, nor were they capitalists. Mr. Eoosevelt says of them, 
"The new settlers were almost all soldiers of the Eevolutionary 
armies; they were hard-working, orderly men. . . .'"" Hence, 
slavery or no slavery became a business matter with these early set- 
tlers from the older North. They were men who were after land, 
says Mr. Eoosevelt ; Virginia had military land reservations in the 
same neighborhood; her Eevolutionary soldiers, who were entitled 
to these lands, were after land, too;''' if slavery could be kept out 
of the new territory during its early settlement and during its 
initial territorial days. New Englanders would be able to control the 
matter when they came to legislate for themselves, and Southern 
opposition would be reduced to a minimum. This waS exactly what 
did occur. Now, if Virginia and Southern emigration had been 



2i3Tlie Winning of the West, Vol. III., 258. 
2i*Ib., 262. 

2i5Smith in Free Soil and Liberty Parties, and all modern writers agree in this 
particular. 

2i8Smith. St. Clair Papers, Vol. I., 124. 
2"The Winning of the West, Vol. III., 266. 
2"King, History of Ohio. 



108 NORTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

prospective buyers, the Ohio Company might have taken another 
view. That the bulk O'f the actual and possilile Southern emigra- 
tion at tlie time to the Northwest was not a buying people, so far 
as Cutler and the Ohio Company could see, is shown from the fact 
that it was the ex-soldiers who were entitled to lands, who en- 
deavored to have the prohibitive clause abrogated. ^S^orth of the Ohio 
were thousands of acres of "bounty lands" due to Southern soldiers 
who might enter upon them. Many of these soldiers owned slaves, 
and naturally desired to carry them to their new homes. The New 
Englanders themselves were "hard-working men"; they knew iroui 
experience that a man who did menial labor in a slave community 
soon came to be i-egarded as one of the "poor whites" ; so they de- 
termined to avoid competition in the labor market, and to guard 
against this social odium. Henoe, these early New Eaigland land 
sharks found it advisable to lobby Congress, and the astute Doctor 
Cutler, of Massachusetts, was engaged for this purpose. As a re- 
sult, "a fortnight after the passage of the Ordinance," Congi-ess 
nominally sold to the Ohio Company, as the new land company 
called themselves, one and one-half million acres o.f land north of 
the Ohio.^" Dr. Cutler, the Oliio Company's agent and lobbyist 
for favorable territorial government, says in his diary, "By this or- 
dinance we obtained the grant of near five million of acres of land, 
amounting to three million and a half of dollars. One million and 
a half for the Ohio Company and the remainder for a private specu- 
lation.""" Payment was to be made in soldier's certificates,"'' which 
were practically worthless. 

So step by step each move of the Northern leaders for anti-slaven' 
regulations may be traced to the most mercenary motives, while 
side by side with these she developed an anti-slavery fanaticism 
against Southern slavery until self-protection drove Southern men 
to suspend all emancipation hopes, and enter a vigorous fight 
against the insane methods of these misled and unduly excited 
pseudo-philanthropists. 

T cannot resist the temptation to digress here to observe that Mr. 
Ehodes remarked that had Jefferson lived in 18G0 he would have 



""Roosevelt, The Winning of the West. Vol. III., 263. 
^^oSmith. St. Clair Tapers, Vol. I., 130. 
"'Justin Winsor. The Western ^lovement, 291. 



NOETHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 109 

been an abolitionist, is entirely imwarranted. Coming from so high 
an aaithority, tlie statement is the more nnfortnnate. No man was 
more loyal tO' the Constitution than Thomas Jefferson. That Jef- 
ferson would for one moment have sanctioned its wilful disregard 
as did the abolitionists in 1860, is straining Jefferson's doctrine 
beyond justification to get a good man seemingly on the side of 
wrong. The slavery question was one of how, of whether the Fed- 
eral Government or the State should decide the negro's destiny. 
Jefferson was always a State abolitionist, and at no time did he 
ever favor the barbarous practices so generally prosecuted or coun- 
tenanced by the abolitionists of 1860; he never favored impover- 
ishing the master. The abolitionists of 1860, nor their predecessors, 
proposed any remuneration for the master's loss, nor any solution 
for the after-conditions of emancipation which were inevitable in 
dense slave communities. Jefferson held that emancipated slaves 
and the former masters could not peaceably cohabit in the same po- 
litical unit. He was correct, especially with reference to the slave 
as he knew him. Even with nearly one hundred 3'ears of civiliza- 
tion since Jefferson's day, the negro in the South is a problem. 
The abolitionists of and prior to 1860 opposed colonization. Jef- 
ferson taught gradual emancipation, and he held that "emancipa- 
tion and deportation" (colonization) should go hand in hand.°" 
To return to slavery and its treatment by that part of the North- 
west, which, as we saw, had been left after the first division of the 
Territory in May, 1800. From the Ohio river to Fort Recovery, 
now a little east of the western boundary of the present State of 
Ohio, north to Canada a line was run, and to the east of this the 
Territory still retained the name Northwest until it became tlie 
State of Ohio in 1803. Let me hurriedly outline its slavery atti- 
tude from the time we left it in 1800 with Greneral Arthur St. Clair 
as governor. The members of the general assembly for the original 
Northwest TerritoTy, which had met in 1799, nearly all lived in 
that part east of the division line oi 1800. This body, Avith one 
new member to fill the place of the one Avho became a citizen of 
Indiana, met again, this time as the representative of the Ohio 
part (then yet called the Northwest Territory) on November 24, 



"2Randall (New York), Life of Jefferson. Vol. I., 398; Morse's Jeflferson, 52 



110 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

1801. Being oomposed of the same men, there was no change in 
their attitude towards slavery. However, tliere is an important 
fact which must not be overlooked. All the time this legislatui-e 
had voiced the sentiment of the eastern, afterward the Ohio sec- 
tion of the Northwest Territory. Burnet unquestionably speaks of 
those who were then in what became Ohio, when he says that they 
were so solidly opposed to slavery. The more westernly and north- 
erly settlers, as I have pointed out, were from the Spanish and 
French days slave-holders. So tliere was really no change as to 
this matter in the western part of the Territory after the division 
and after it became the Indiana Territory, with Harrison as gov- 
ernor. 

When Ohio came to her first constitutional convention there was 
not that unanimity concerning slavery which had prevailed in the leg- 
islature. One faction of this convention, determined to secure a clause 
modifying the slavery provision, and so numerous was this element 
that they came within one vote of succeeding.^ This pro-slavery 
faction could not have been of Southern extraction since there were 
fewer Southern men among the delegates than there were in the 
legislature which showed such negi'o antagonism."* When it was 
discovered that tlie negro did not meet popular approval as a use- 
ful and productive economic laborer, this same convention showed 
no disposition to treat him with any moral consideration whatever. 
The sentiment which soon drove the free negro by cruel expulsion 
from the State came prominently to the surface in this body met 
to lay the foundation of a State which had the "encouragement of 
religion" incorporated side by side with the slavery article in its 
Territorial organic act. Cutler, a Cliristian minister though he 
was, had procured what he regarded as a happy government for 
white New Englanders. The negro in Ohio could not be used to 
profit; he was not wanted; no charity was to be his unless that 
charity could be made a tool to filch cash from the pocket of a 
Southern white man or gain strength for Northern political eco- 
nomic demands. This convention, composed largely of New Eng- 
landers, anticipated by fifty years the Dred Scott opinion; they 
decided that the negro was not a citizen; and Judge Burnet tells 



="P.lack, The Story of Ohio, 15' 
"*Burnet, Notes, 362. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 111 

US that it was understood by this body of delegates that "people of 
color were not represented"; and that since "free whites alone" 
were represented "people of color were not considered as parties" 
to the government then being established, and "should have no 
part in its administration.''"" 

After this convention anti-slavery sentiment gained rapid head- 
way. Black and others tell us that soon Ohio became solidly op- 
posed to slaver}^, "for even the element which the State had drawn 
from the South by no means arrayed themselves against emanci- 
pation."""' So, with King, we readily agree that the State solidly 
withstood every attempt to qualify or suspend the anti-slavery ar- 
ticle in the Ordinance organizing the Territorial govemment.^^' 
Let us now briefly inquire into the causes which led to the posi- 
tion on slavery thus taken by the Ohio people. Why was it that 
her early settlers, during her Northwest Territorial period, steadily 
opposed slavery, while the settlers in the French and other neigh- 
borhoods were at first favorable to a continuance of slavery? To 
my mind the answer is by no means difficult. In her pioneer days 
the Ohio part of the Northwest was without markets. Burnet says 
this was the case as late as 1802."' Her soil was rich, but in its lati- 
tude and primitive condition entirely unsuited to slave labor. 
Doyle, Fellow in All Souls College, Oxford, England, writing in 
1882, says, "The utility of a slave is that of a macliine. When once 
he has been trained to any special kind of industry, no attempt to 
enlarge his sphere of activity can be attended with profit. The 
time given to the new acquisition is so much waste, and his mental 
incapacity and absence of any moral interest in his work almost 
necessarily limit him to a single task. Thus, as we have seen, the 
many attempts to develop various forms of production in the South- 
em colonies all failed. Maryland and Virginia grew only tobacco, 
South Carolina grew mainly rice.""' Under existing conditions 
the products of slave labor could not be grown in the Ohio section 
of the Northwest. The white settlers frequently struggled for tlieir 
own sustenance. "Food," King tells us, "rather than shelter, was 



225Notes, 355. 

226Black, The Story of Ohio. 214. 

227Kingr, History of Ohio, 364. 

228Notes. 329. 

22»English Colonies in America, 387-8. 



112 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

the severest want of the pioneer.'"'" Bread and salt were scarcest 
of all.'" When the products of the field and wild game supplied 
these primary wants the surplus production, long after the anti- 
slavery sentiment prevailed, was dead waste. There were no markets. 
In that portion of the Northwest Territory, where we have seen that 
slavery survived longest, the proximity- of Canada and the better 
transportation facilities gave an outlet for some of the surplus pro- 
duction. These slaveholders in the Detroit (now in Michigan) and 
others of the western and nortJiern settlements of the Northwest 
were farmers. They had not come unaided and without money to 
struggle with the virgin wilds. As Moore tells us, they had been 
aided by "liberal subsidies in farm implements.'""' They had ex- 
cellent servants, we are told; they used antiquated methods of ag- 
riculture, yet they obtained a big price for their products.''^ No 
doubt the immense fur trade carried on in tliis region had much to 
do with the demand for farm products. Nor was this all that put 
Ohio at a disadvantage. "Besides their land-locked isolation, the 
pioneers, in clearing the forest and in turning up the rich mould 
of their cornfields, encountered a far more destroying adversity in 
the ague and violent biliary disorders, with which the soil was in- 
fected.""'* So both climate and market conditions made the slave 
a burden. Very many Southerners from Virginia, Kentucky, 
Maryland, or now and then to the further south, removed with 
their negi'oes to the Northwest Territory. The historian Howe 
tells us that one of the early pioneers sent his son to winter in the 
Territory wnth a dozen negroes who were sent from Kentucky, and 
that it was with difficulty that the negroes were kept from freez- 
ing.°'° This shows that even the rude accommo'dations of the early 
days made slavery undesirable. Having found them unprofitable 
at home, or soon so discovering on arriving in the Territory, many 
of these Southern men manumitted their slaves. Their numbers 
were increased by slaves who ran away from the South. As a re- 
sult of both thei^e in tlie first vears of the voung State, she found 



^''History of Ohio. 298. 

'"'lb., 299. 

='-Chas. Moore. The Northwest Tnder Three Flags. 

-■''Burnet, Notes, 282, n. et scq. 

=3*King, History of Ohio, 308. 

=3'H©we. Century Ed. History of Ohio, Vol, III., ]( 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTLIERN SECESSION. 113 

herself beset by a shiftless, stealing, plundering negTo element. 
Something was necessary to protect the whites. Harsh laws 
against free negroes were enacted, and "expulsion imder these laws 
was cruelly enforced.'"'" King and other authorities who speak on 
this point, say these negroes were without "fitness or capacity to pro- 
vide for themselves.'' 

Yet with this example in their midst, the abolition element in the 
Xorth who were crying for unconditional emancipation, of the 
slaves in the Southern States, and who were teaching Southern 
slaves to demand immediate and unconditional emancipation, 
found some of their warmest adherents in Ohio. They refused to 
see that if Ohio's peace, happiness, and the security of her women 
and children were threatened and endangered by the presence of 
tlie comparatively few negroes whom she found within her borders, 
that the danger in the more densely colored sections throughout the 
South would have been infinitely more distressing. The Ohio ne- 
groes were not unlike other slaves or free negroes throughout the 
South. They were, as a whole, "without fitness or capacity to pro- 
vide for themselves." This was pre-eminently irue of the Southern 
negro at the inception and during the time Northern men abused 
the Southern slave-oivner, and insisted on immediate and uncon- 
ditional emancipation. It was in part to prevent the dire calamity 
from which Ohio shrank that killed the emancipation sentiment 
which early and for 3ears flourished in the South. 

Though he did not profit by the lesson, yet the experience of the 
unconipromising alDolitionist, Gerrit Smith, attested the incapa- 
city, unfitness, and unwillingness of the Southern negro to provide 
for himself. Smith proved the correctness of the slaveholder's con- 
tention when he failed to induce the negrO' to make an effort at self- 
providence. He offered thousands of acres of farming lands, 
sitimted in New York, to any negroes, free or runaway slaves, who 
vrould accept and live upon them. John "Brown, afterward of Har- 
per's Ferry notoriety, went into the community to assist and teach 
any who might take advantage of the offer."" The scheme was a 
failure; the negro of that day "had neither the fitness nor capacity 
to provide for himself." Nor was the experiment tried in America 



23'-King, History of Ohio, edited by Schudder, 297. 
"'Frothingham, Life of Theo. Parlser, 450. 
8 



114 NOETHERN REBELLION" AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

only. In 1787 the English Government settled several hundred ex- 
American slaves, who had attached themselves to their army during 
the Eevolution, at Sierra Leone, situated on the west coast of Africa. 
Free negToes and negroes taken from captured slavers, "liberated by 
the mixed commission courts," had been added until, in 1850, the 
population was 55,500, one hundred only of whom were whites. Of 
this experiment J. Smith Homans, corresponding secretary Cham- 
ber of Commerce, New York State, in 1858, said, "Great efforts 
have been made to introduce order and industrial habits among 
these persons. We are sorry," continues this New York authority, 
"however, to be obliged to add that these efforts, though prosecuted 
at an enormous expense of blood and treasure, have been signally 
unsuccessful."'^'* 

■ Disregarding these important lessons, the abolitionists plunged 
boldly into the heart of the South, and declaimed for "immediate 
and unconditional emancipation in the midst of slave States" ; and 
as I have elsewhere shown, began to scatter seeds of discontent 
among the slaves themselves. This attack upon the slave States 
themselves began in the early days of the States formed from the 
Northwest Territory and spread until, in King's own words, "during 
the five years preceding 1840 , . . numbers [of slaves] were abducted 
from the slave States and concealed or smuggled by the *under- 
ground railroad' into Canada. The abolitionists," he adds, "as they 
were indiscriminately called, had become fanatical and lawless in 
their delirium of conscience. . . ."^^° 

The correctness of these conclusions concerning the anti-slavery 
growth in Ohio and the causes which led to early anti-slavery en- 
actments, is more obvious when we turn to the civil and industrial 
history of slavery to the west of the ^Mississippi, which will also help 
to account for its origin in the Northwest Territory, In the days 
of its early settlement all the upper portion of the Mississippi val- 
ley was called Illinois, We have seen something of the slave legis- 
lative history in that portion of it west of Ohio and east of the 
Mississippi, which was settled by the French in 1699. The slave 
had gone befoTC the first permanent settlers. La Salle was accom- 
panied by a negro slave when murdered in March, 1687. La Salle 



^'Commerce and Commercial Nav. (Harpers, 1858), 1777. 
^^sRlstory of Ohio, 365. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 115 

had built a French fort in Illinois in 1678-'80 for the purpose of 
carrying on the fur trade, and had geen granted "the monopoly of 
the lake trade."'" Further down the valley, and at Kaskaskia, and 
at the settlements on the river above where Memphis now is, and at 
settlements in what is now Missouri, colonies of French, who were 
the pioneers of tliat section, were planted about 1720. Most of these 
emigrants were from Canadai, These "many" French families who 
settled this region were not independent frontiersmen who set out 
practically unaided to battle with the wilds and to contend witih 
the Indians. Like the early English colonies, they were under a 
kind of proprietary leadership, and were either planted by private 
capitalists, who expected returns on the investment, or encouraged 
and assisted by government officials who expected to extend their 
empire. The emigrants who first broke the virgin prairies in what 
is now Missouri were under the lead of Renaud. These pioneers 
generally devoted themselves to farming.'" They had slaves, but 
these negroes had been "granted to them by Bienville" for the express 
purpose of cultivating the lands.'" Bienville was a French official, in 
influence with his government, and with unlimited capital at his 
disposal. These emigrants had come out at the instance of Sieur 
Eenaud, one of the directors of the company, who was speculating 
in the new lands. Both he and the several settlers had received 
liberal grants of land from the French authority, and Carr tells us 
that these were the first land grants in the present State of Mis- 
souri.'" 

To the north of these emigTants were the settlements in their 
Canadian home, to the south was New Orleans, with its market and 
demand for a variety of products. The Mississippi was utilized for 
transportation, not alone by these settlers, but by those to the east of 
the river who had settled along the Illinois river in the present 
State of Illinois. Like their Southern kinsmen, these found a mar- 
ket down the river; and so all the colonies planted in Illinois, as 
all this region was then called, grew "steadily in population and 
prosperity. Besides the fur trade, which [early] extended some 



=«CaiT, History of Missouri. 13. 

2"Carr, Missouri, 24. 

=«Ib. 

=*5History of Missouri, 24. 



116 XORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

three or four hundred leagues up the Missouri, and the lead mines 
of the Meremac [to the southwest of the present St. Louis], from 
wliich the yield was practically unlimited, the agricultural products 
of the district began to assume important proportions. From the 
first arrival of the French in this quarter they had given more or 
less of their attention to agriculture . . ."'" The main products 
were wheat and Indian corn, but every year, "in the latter part of 
December," there were shipped from the several settlements in all 
this Illinois country "boats loaded with 'flour, corn, bacon, hams, 
both of bear and ho'gs, corned pork, and wild beef, myrtle and bees- 
wax, cotton, tallow, leather, tobacco, lead, copper, buffalo wool, 
venison, poultrj^, bear's grease, oil, skins, fowls, hides, beer, and 
wine.' "'*' Hence, there was a demand for the products of slave 
labor. But the slaves were not so much the demand of the settlers 
as they were the result of a desire on the part of the proprietary 
or speculative company to make their new lands and new invest- 
ments produce a return. This Mississippi Company, as it was 
called, was in control of this region for fourteen years. During this 
time they sent out seven thousand white colonists, to whom 
they gave two thousand negro slaves. They surrendered their char- 
ter to the King of France in 1731,^" who continued to encourage 
slavery until November, 1762, when Spain became owner of all the 
French territory in America. In 1763, at the Treaty of Paris, Eng- 
land got all of the Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi river. 
As we have seen, the greater number of the early colonies were in 
what is now Illinois; so this transfer left Spain with but 891 in- 
habitants in upper Louisiana, and to the west of the Mississippi 
river. Many of these were in that section now embraced in j\Iis- 
:<ouri. Life with tlie colonists went pretty much as before. A few 
families moved to the west ol the river and out of English juris- 
diction,'" and "by far the greater number" engaged in agriculture. 
So that the trade with New Orleans continued to increase until in 
1787, about the time the Ohio Company was driving its bargain 
with Congress for the purchase of land in the Northwest Territory, 



="Ib.. 26. 

"Mb., 27. 

"'Mb.. 20. 

2"Ib.. 24. 



XOETHERX EEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERX SECESSIOX. 117 

at one time ten boats arrived in the Illinois country from Xew Or- 
leans."" For tlie times this indicates an immense trade. 

The proximity and hostility of the English alarmed Spain for the 
safety of her American possessions. So, while Congress was nomi- 
nally selling the lands in the ISTorthwest Territory to N'ew England 
speculators, Spain was endeavoring to strengthen her Louisiana 
claims by holding out inducements to the American citizen to set- 
tle in her domain. These propositions were especially attractive to 
many citizens of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. Just at the 
time the Southerners found that they could not carry their slaves 
to the N'orthwest Territory, Spain began to grant to those who 
would settle on her territory west of tlie Mississippi farms of eight 
hundred acres for about fifty^ dollars for the entire tract.'*" Even 
this "payment was not necessary to give possession"; and since 
"there was practically no such thing in the province as taxation,"'"" 
and since religious freedom was granted and other inducements 
held out, we can readily understand how a slaveholder could afford 
to move into a rich farming country," and especially one with an es- 
tablished market. So, while the New Englander and his neighljor 
were buying a home in the wilds of Ohio and struggling with the 
miasma of her mold, their Southern neighbors were finding upon 
the rich plains of Missouri homes for the asking, and an established 
market for the products of their hands or those of their slaves. 
Twelve settlements, including St. Louis, St. Charles, Little ]\Ieadow, 
ISTew i\Iadrid, St. Genevieve, and others in the Missouri neighborhood 
in Upper Louisiana for the years 1799, furnish a showing of pro- 
ducts which speak much of the market advantages which South- 
erners found as they moved Avestward. In that year we find these 
twelve settlements supplying the market with 85,534 bushels of 
corn, 88,349 bushels of wheat, 28,667 pounds of tobacco, 170,000 
pounds of lead, and 1,754 packages of shaved skins of 100 pounds 
each, "homed cattle" 7,980, horses 1,763, besides flour and other 
products. Much trade went to Canada even from this section, es- 
pecially all the finer furs, because there they brought a better price 
than in N'ew Orleans.''* The new home alreadv had a system of 



="Ib., 55. 




""lb., 58. 




=^Ib. 




"lAm. State Papers : 


Misc. 



118 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

easy and indolent slavery of negroes which had been tided over the 
critical period in the history of the country by lavish expenditure 
of the fortunes of those who had planted the first colonies, or as in 
the early English colonies, which had not alone been sanctioned, 
but which had been encouraged by both France and Spain by sup- 
plying slaves to the settlers. 

Now, I submit that the history of all the Northwest, like that of 
New England, shows: (1) Each State or Territory settled its own 
slavery question; (2) slavery is profitable only in primitive or less 
advanced times and in the use of rude methods, and then only 
where there is a market for the products of the institution; (3) co- 
operation by the North in the enactment of the various national 
slavery laws indicated not a desire to increase slave territory ; anti- 
slavery sentiment from the earliest days on down was all the while — 
the entire United States considered as a whole' — growing. The 
Northern cooperation with the Soutli indicated a fairness of mind, 
a keenness of penetration, and a profound understanding of tlie real 
drift of tlie slavery situation, and a wholesome loyalty to the Consti- 
tution of the Union; (4) the plea that "slavery is becoming an 
uneradicable American institution" was a false alarm, started about 
1820, and which gathered emptiness of sound in the ratio that 
slavery was disappearing; and (5) a no less important lesson is 
that the same causes which drove slavery from New England and 
all the North were operating steadily in the South, and in due 
time, at less cost of life and treasure than that- of the war, would 
have emancipated every Southern slave. In all new countries agri- 
culture and the most simple of manufacture have been in the van- 
guard. The negro slave was totally unsuited to a higher stage in 
the industrial world. Northern historians, of whom Channing and 
Rhodes are eminent representatives, tell us that nothing could have 
been more ruinous to the financial interests of a country than the 
system of slavery as it prevailed during the years immediately 
prior to the Civil War. They are either correct or incorrect.. If 
correct, slavery was killing itself ; it was limited by virtue of its own 
nature. Such writers misunderstand the attendant conditions of 
Southern slavery; bnt that it was self -timed and must pass in the 
very nature of the onward progress from which no part of our world 
can escape, is attested by the slave history, not alone among English 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 119 

people, not alone among the Eomans, but in all the earth ; and that 
the natural limit was already being reached in the South is a cor- 
rect ohservation. of many writers, and is proven by the history of 
New England and all the North, where the American people were 
first forced to abandon the more simple forms of industry. 

Mr. Hinsdale, Ph. D., LL. D., of the University of Michigan, 
strongly anti-slavery in his feelings, thus sums up the slavery con- 
quest in the Northwest : 

"In sixty-two years following the adoption of the National Con- 
stitution eighteen new States were brought into the American 
Union — nine free and nine slave States. . . . The creation of the 
new free and slave States was due to causes far more powerful than 
state-craft. . . . He who considers all these things, in conmection 
with the fact of Western geography, must see that the expansion of 
the areas of freedom and of slavery in the United States was due to 
natural causes, and particularly that the organization and admis- 
sion of the States, according to programme [one free and one slave], 
was so much beyond the ken and power of statesmen as the regula- 
tion of the tides and eclipses is beyond the power of natural philo- 
sophers."='' 



=520]d Northwest (Rev. Ed.), 356, 357. 



Vil. 

THE AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE. 

On© of the pleas — the third under my classification — set forth in 
opposition to the repeal of the restrictive addendum to the Missouri 
admission bill, was that it would re-establish and increase the im- 
portation of African negroes. To appreciate the true merits of the 
plea requires a brief examination of the entire slave import trade. 

The charge that the South desired to encourage or to carry on the 
impoTting of African slaves is unjust. The Soiithern people were 
not — never had been — importers of slaves. Of course, there were 
a few individual exceptions ju'st as in the ISTorth there were indi- 
vidual exceptions to the later prevailing slavery sentiment. In the 
colonial days all the southern colonies would have stopped the im- 
portation of slaves had they not been prevented by England. Eng- 
land, at the time the American colonies were under her jurisdic- 
tion, was the largest impoi-tcr of and dealer in African slave's in 
the world. Her mercantile interests demanded a market, and hence 
she kept her slavers busy pouring negroes into the southern colonies 
in America. By the time these colonies had reached a period where 
they were free to act and able to' act, slaves had become so numer- 
ous that the Southerner honestly and rightly feared immediate and 
unconditional emancipation. All was done that wisdom and safety 
indicated; importations weie forbidden and plans for emancipation 
were inaugurated. On the other hand, Northern citizens gradually 
became the slave monarchs of the world. England came to see the 
sin of stealing human beings foT slavery, and converted her slavers 
into sentinels of ])rotection. New Englanders grew bold in the 
trade. With one hand the North gathered slaves from Africa or 
elsewhere and with the other she encouraged slave-uprisings, deser- 
tions, and made life and personal safety in the South just as inse- 
cure as possible; and all the while called loudly for "immediate 
emancipation in tlie midst of slave States," as Mr. Blair, a mem- 
ber of Lincoln's cabinet, and many others all the years before him 
frequently declared. 



NOKTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 131 

What is the history of the American slave trade? Savagery, bar- 
barism, heathendom, — none furni'sh so dark, so bloody, so sicken- 
ing, so blighting a page. The story fills volumes, yet my time and 
purpose allow me to stop to see the merest outline. Brief as it 
must be, it will do much to help us to interpret the bitterness with 
which the professions of Northern interest in tlie slave per ipse were 
hurled back into the face of those who made them. 

The early landing of a cargo of hventy slaves at the English 
colony of Jamestown, in what is now Virginia, in August, 1619,"^'' 
generally is said to be the first recorded sale of slaves in the present 
limits of the United States. It is almost certain, however, that the 
ISTorse explorers landed slaves on New England's shores long before 
the coming of the little Jamestown colony. The Spaniards, too, 
had owned and sold slaves in other parts of America prior to this 
date. To the Spaniards we are indebted for the introduction of 
negi'o slavery into the United States in 15S6.''' Negro slaves were 
carried into Alabama in 1559 or 1560.'" Kansas, I am fully con- 
vinced, found negro slaves bearing Coronado's burdens across hex 
plains in 1541-'43, nearly fifty years before the coming of the Dutch 
Trader to Virginia..''" The cargo landed at Jamestown was com- 
posed in part only of negroes, and their coming was entirely unpre- 
meditated and absolutely unknown to the colonists until the little 
armored ship had touched the Virginia shores. The vessel belonged 
to the Dutch, who were then the greatest sea traders of the woTld. 
We are told that the Dutchman wanted provisions in exchange for 
his cargo, "of which the master pleaded his vessel was in dire need." 

Much unnecessary emphasis is placed upon the landing of these 
twenty negro slaves ; lilcewise much untruth is said about this being 
the beginning of slavery in America. So far as the question of slave- 
holding by the North or the South is concerned, it is of no practical 
value. There were only a few days between this event and the land- 
ing and buving of slaves in what is now called the North. The 



-"Or a later date, as good authority insists ; the distinguished John Marshall 
says it was in 1621 : History American Colonies (Philadelphia, 1824), 56. 

='*Lowery (1901), Spanish Settlements in the United States, 165; Shea, Nar. 
and Crit. History U. S., 238. 

25=Lowery, Spanish Settlements in United States. 357. 

■'^nb., 329. 



122 XORTHERX REBELLION AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Dutch introduced African slaves a's soon as tliey obtained a footing 
on American soil. This was in what is now the State of New York. 
The Dutch Manhattan Charter of Liberties and Esemptions in 
1629 said, "The Company will use their endeavors to supply the 
colonists with as many blacks as they conveniently can." There is 
no doubt that slavery existed in the New England colonies before 
tJiis pledge to enslave human beings was made. Hence, the intro- 
duction of slaves and the beginning of the slave trade had a con- 
temporaneous beginning in the colonies which first settled what we 
now call the North and the South. This is as literally true as one 
could find in widely separated sections between which there was no 
intentional concert. Speaking of the introduction of slavery, Bur- 
gess, of Columbia University, New York, notes that it was first le- 
galized by the North, and then he observes that "the impartial his- 
torian must place a greater blame on the Northern colony.""' As 
rapidly as settlers came, the institution of slavery spread until it 
was fostered by all the North ; and, although for some time Georgia 
withstood slavery, sooner or later the needs of the Southern colonies 
made African slavery an American institution. From the first and 
for many 3'ears the New England colonies were both slave-o-woiers 
and slave-traders; but when local ownei-ship became unprofitable, 
and while yet there was a great profit from the slave trade up to 
1860, — the Civil War — the North continued to be America's slave 
carrier and importer of captured humanity. As early as 1630 the 
New England ship-ownei-s began an increased activity in the im- 
portation of negroes to America; but the increased activity reached 
not alone the American trade; many of the chief slave ports of the 
world were supplied by Northern capital and men. The Desire, the 
first American built ship, was built at Marblehead, Mass., in 1636. 
It at once and for many years engaged in selling negroes to and 
from the West Indies. Much information is left us in Winthrop's 
Journal concerning her traffic. "In 1635 the whole number of 
slaves imported into Virginia was but twent^^-six," so the historian 
Spears tells us. In scarce a year after this, this one single Northern 
ship had enslaved many times that number. As we have seen, the 
Southern ports in America would have been closed to the slave trade 
but for the fact that England held them open for the benefit of her 



="The Middle Period, 41. 



XORTHERX RBBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 123 

own slavers.^^ When finally the hold of England was shaken from 
America, Virginia and other Southern States forever closed their 
ports to slave importation. In 1778 "Virginia ordered the emanci- 
pation of every slave introduced from abroad.""" On the 17tli day 
of December, 1792, the General Assembly of Virginia declared, 
"That no persons shall henceforth be slaves within this common- 
wealth, except such aS were so on the 17th day of October," 1785, 
"and the descendants of the females of them." Section two of the 
act declared: "Slaves which shall hereafter be brought into this 
commonwealth, and kept therein one whole year together, or so long 
at different times as shall amount to one year, shall be free." Sec- 
tion three provided penalties against importing negroes from Af- 
rica or elsewhere, and section four provided a test oath for such 
persons as desired to heeome bona fide residents of the State, requir- 
ing them to swear that they carried with them no recently imported 
negroes, and that they were not resorting to subterfuge of residency 
in order to sell imported negroes. ^°° As late as 1841, commenting 
on a law of Mississippi passed in 1833 prohibiting the importation 
of slaves, the Supreme Court of the United States said, "It is an ab- 
solute and positive prohibition, going into full effect on the 1st day 
of May, 1833, and making from that time the introduction of slaves 
for the purpose of sale, a direct violation of the fundamental law 
of that state."^^ Again in the same report it is said, "In Mississippi 
a traffic in slaves existed which the people of that state desired to 
stop. They declared that it should stop after a certain day." From 
the lowest to the highest, the courts of Mississippi sustained and en- 
forced that law. 

However, slavery had its hold on America — the whole of it in 
one form or another. Both time and motives of interest were neces- 
sary to its destruction. Left to herself, these would have emanci- 
pated the SoutJi's slaves, which, of course, would have destroyed her 
interest in the slave trade, without the cost of the war. Nor was 
the institution peculiarly iVmerican. In the colonial period, and for 



258Rhodes. U. S.. Vol. I.. 8 : Bancroft, History of the U. S., Vol. II., 550 ; Hil- 
dreth. History of the U. S.. Vol. II.. 494. 

=MBaiicroft. History U. S., Vol. V., 510. 

^soCollection of Acts of General Assembly of Virginia, 196 : Calandars Home 
OflBce Papers, 1770. 1772. p. 600; Parton, Life of Jefferson, 138. 

-^lo Peters, U. S., 456. 



124 XORTHERN EEBELLION AND SOUTHEIfN SECESSIOK. 

nian}^ 3-ears that followed, it was Avell-nigh universal."" It was an 
institution well-nigh co-existent with nian himself. At the time 
Virginia was struggling with the import question, the truth is that 
nowhere was tlie moral right of superiors to enslave inferiors ques- 
tioned. On this i>oint the Supreme Court of the United States once 
said, "The African slave trade is a trade which has been authorized 
and protected ])y the laws of all commercial natioiis; it cannot, 
therefore, be considered as conti-ary to the laws of nations.'""* All 
classes everywhere acted from motives of purely financial interests. 
This is true of our Northern bretliren; they had not reached any 
higher moral status. "Even that law of Massachusetts in 1641, so 
often quoted to prove that the colonists there were opposed to hu- 
man slavery, proves, in fact, that voluntary' slavery was common. 
It sa3''s, 'There shall never be any bond slavery among us, imless it 
be lawful captives, taken in just wars or [such] as [shall] willingly 
sell themselves.' " This is virtually the moral code of slavery in 
heathendom. It show's that with these colonists slavery was not re- 
garded as dishonorable. Nowhere did the right or wrong of the 
matter dictate the action. "It is said to be a tradition in an hon- 
orable Massachusetts family that an ancestor, a respected minister, 
needing a servant, sent a hogshead of rum to the West Coast [of 
Africa] and had it exchanged there for a kidnapped negro, whom 
he made his chattel, while neitiier his parishioners nor the com- 
munity at large thought the proceeding objectionable, or even ec- 
centi'ic."'"* 

Henry Wilson has labored to picture the local exchange of slaves 
on Southern soil. But tlie real horror of the evil is seen in the 
slave ships engaged in the import trade. The extent of the slave 
trade outside of America., the greatest bulk of which never touclied 
the American shores, is most appalling. Negro slavery in the South- 
ern States furnishes noticing that will begin to compare with the 
brutality, the fiend ishne'ss, and the widespread devastation, its 
pursuit brought. It lasted to the Civil War, — but the slave markets 
of the United States were by no means essential to its existence. I 
pause to call attention to a few instances, which show its brutality 



=«2HaIlam, The Middle Ages, Vol. I., 106. 

28no Wheaton. OG. 

=»*Hosmer. A Short History of the Mississippi Valley. 162. 



XORTHEKX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 125 

and miser}'. These are not isolated facts, not exceptions, but true 
examples of what was seen on the greater number of slavers. The 
picture varied only in the bloody hue its ill-luck or fortune caused 
it to take. 

"It i's a most interesting fact that while the slave trade developed 
vikings when it was a legal and reputable traffic, it developed a 
race void of every manly instinct when it became unlawful. As il- 
lustrating this fact, it may be said that in the nineteenth century 
tlie slavers dealt in children as far as possible. Children did not 
Ijring as large a price as field hands, of course, but they cowered 
under torture, and there was no fear of tlieir rising against the 
crew."""^ These children were tortured, were compelled to eat, were 
compelled to dance, were compelled to sing, under the lash ; or beaten 
to death and thrown intp the sea as food for the sharks. In one 
instance a two-year-old child was beaten into a lifeless state, and its 
mother was compelled to throw it into the sea. 

In 1844 an American vessel was making a voyage with five hun- 
dred and thirty adult slaves in her holds. An insurrection had been 
suppres.*ed, but to inspire terror "forty-six men and one woman 
were hanged and shot to death." They were manacled two and two. 
About twelve who were chained by the leg to a fellow, were dra^vn 
by the neck clear of the deck, "and [each] hi's leg laid across the 
rail and chopped off to save the irons and release him from his com- 
l^anions. . . . The bleeding negro was then drawn up, shot in the 
l^reast, and throAvn overboard . . .,"' and "all kind's of sport was 
made of the business."^'^ On another occasion a drunken crew, with 
four hundred slaves crowded into their vessel, forgot to secure a 
fresh supply of water, and did not realize the mistake until far out 
at sea. The physician of the ship tells us that they "were drawing 
from the last casks before this discovery was made," and that the 
captain made him "calculate how long it would sustain the crew 
and cargo" of slaves. It was decided that the slaves were each to 
have "half a gill and the crew a gill each day. Then began a tor- 
ture worse than death to the blacks. Penned in their close dun- 
geons, to the number of nearly five hundred, they suffered continual 
torment. Our crew and drivers were unwilling to allow even the 



='«Spears. Am. Slave Trade. 70. 

2'«'John R. Spears. Am. Slave Trade. 80. 



126 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

half gill per diem. . . . Instead of lowering buckets, it became neces- 
sary to ponr the water into half-pint measures. Those furtliest 
from the gratings never got a drop. . . . Death followed so fast that 
in a short time at leatet a hundred men and women were shackled 
to dead partners." In a few days after this the captain and "four 
of the men were taken suddenly ill with a disease that baffled my 
medical knowledge. Their tongues swelled and grew black; their 
flesh grew yellow, and in six hours they were dead." All the men 
but three and the physician finally were dead, when he says that he 
"began to notice a strange fetid smell pervading the vessel, and a 
low heavy fog on deck, almost like steam. . . . our rotting negroes 
under the hatches had generated the plague, and it was a malaria 
or death-mist that I saw rising."^" In connection with this it is 
interesting to remember that it is declared by good authority that 
the yellow fever "was generated from dead slaves in the slavers at 
Eio de Janeiro in 1849." "I will repay, saith the Lord." 

Picture after picture of these revolting cruelties might be given, 
but we spare the reader, amd refer him to the works of Spears, Greorge 
Bancroft, and to the many instances fully giA^en in the official re- 
ports of the various United States courts. Who is responsible for 
all this dire inhumanity ? Who prosecuted this terrible traffic ? To 
whom are we to look for the guilty party? Spears truthfully says 
that the South received "these stolen goods," but he, as is generally 
done, overlooks the fact that the greater majority of negroes stolen 
and enslaved by Northern slavers were not sold, directly or indi- 
rectly, to Southern slave-owners. Certainly, then, there was an 
enormous traffic in slaves witli which the South had nothing what- 
ever to do. More men, women, and children were enslaved to bni- 
tal masters in this non-Southern traffic than the whole numl^er of 
imported slaves held by Southern masters. The South i's held re- 
sponsible for what her slave masters did; if men of wealth and 
often public stations in life did greater wrongs, for the correction of 
which there was legal power in each Northern State, is there any 
reason why that section should not be in the same way charged with 
the guilt ? Then, who prosecuted the American Slave Trade ? 

"In America the New England colonies took the lead in the slave 
trade. Barefooted boys waded through the snow to find berths in 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 127 

the forecastles of the colon}- ships, and, hard as sailor's life was 
then, they fonnd more comfort afloat than on the farms they left 
behind.""" In 1713 Newport, Ehode Island, was the chief slave 
ship port in America. GeO'. H. MooTe, in his history of slavery in 
Massachusetts, says : ''At the very birth of foreign commerce from 
ISTew England ports the African slave trade became a regular busi- 
ness." To such an extent did the slave trade of Newport grow, that 
Dr. Field, a native of Massachusetts, sugge»sts that it "might have 
been called Slave-port, from the number of cargoes of slaves that 
were landed there from Af rica."""' 

From the statements made in most of our histories, one might 
think that the early skives of the North were all freed and well 
cared for by the former master. Elsewhere I have shown that in 
few oir no cases did emancipation come to the slaves living at the 
passage of the several emancipation laws. How many negroes in 
the Nortli were left there and made to enjoy freedom ? Thousands 
were sold ; some into the fields of the South, but the greater num- 
ber sent elsewhere when it began to be loiown that slavery would 
not succeed on Northern soil.'™ They were perhaps carried off in 
ships to the Madeiras or the Canaries, which were accustomed to 
touch Guinea to trade for negroes "who were carried generally to 
Barbadoes, or to the other English islands of the West Indie's." Nor 
was their condition under slavery at home such as to inspire any 
great love for the masters. In the Revolutionary War, during the 
march of Howe through Pennsylvania, we are told that the* negro 
slaves prayed for the success of the British arms, believing that such 
success would bring liberty."^ 

Until policy dictated otherwise, contrary to what we are often 
told, the legislatures of the Northern colonies encouraged the im- 
portation of slaves. "The Massachusetts statutes of 1.705, which 
is curiously enough often quoted as showing that the people there 
were opposed to the slave trade, were carefully worded to promote 
the trade. It did, indeed, lay a tax of four pounds on each negro 
imported, but a 'drawliack' was allowed upon exportation." In 



2«8Ib., 18. 

269]3rigiit Skies and Dark Shadows, 155. 

2'»House Report, No. 148, 14-15, 3T Cong., 2 sess. 

2"Rliodes, History U. S., Vol. I., 13 : Bancroft, History U. S., Vol. VI., 180. 



128 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

other words, the slirewd legislators meant to encourage the exchange 
of negro slaves by the shipper for such commodities as the New 
Englander had to sell, and when this was done the nominal import 
tax was refimded. "The harbors of New England were thus of- 
fered as a free exchange mart for slaves.'"'' In 1708 the governor 
of Ehode Island reported that between 1698 and 1708 one hundred 
and three vessels were built in that State, all of which went out to 
capture, buy, or get in any manner, African negroes; and, perhaps 
without a single exception, these negroes were sold to other places 
than the American colonies. In 1770 Rhode Island had yet one 
hundred and fifty vessels engaged in the slave trade, and Spears 
quotes Hopkins for the assertion that "Ehode Island has been more 
deeply interested in the slave trade, and has enslaved more Afri- 
cans than any other colony in New England.'"" We are told that 
Hopkins again wrote in 1787: "This trade in human specie's has 
been the first wheel of commerce in Newport [E. I.], on which 
every other movement in business has depended. That to^wTi has 
built up, and flourished in times past on the slave trade, and by it 
[the inhabitants] have gotten mofet of their wealth and riches."''* 

Just twenty-six years after the much-told landing of slaves in 
Virginia, Boston, Massachusetts, furnished the first American, so 
far as history or tradition tells us, who initiated America's shame- 
ful inroads upon African homes. He assisted in an attack on an 
African negro village on a Sunday, and, without a shadow of jus- 
tification or excuse, slaughtered with cannon and musket men, 
women, and children, and captured such as could be' secured. The 
Boston slave ship carried off two of the captives as its share of the 
glory V^ In this attack, for no other purpose than to fill the holds 
of a Northern slave ship, more innocent persons were murdered than 
the whole number of slaves then held by Virginia masters. On that 
Sabbath "they killed many" and secured two as a reward ! It is 
said that after these two slaves reached New England, and the story 
of the wholesale murder incident to their capture got abroad, that 
they were returned : a poor atonement ! About the same time an- 



^'^Spears, Am. Slave Trade, 19. 
^"Ib., 19. 
=^nb., 20. 
"^Ib., 48. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 139 

other trader instigated an African King to make war to secure 
slaves. In a three days' battle "4,500 were slain on the spot.""' 
The nefarious devices used by Northern ship-slavers for the cap- 
ture of negroes, were of a manner more revolting than anything 
reported in Christian history. Of these dealers and importers. 
Spears says that they "introduced what is known to professional 
thieves as the badger game, and that they made money out of it, 
and that the ship merchants and the stockholders in the ship knew 
that it was done and willingly shared the profits."'" This was not 
a temporary trade limited to colonial days; it was carried on by 
Northern slavers for nearly 250 years. War, murder, treachery, 
were not only countenanced, but incited and aided. Helpless, bleed- 
ing, and manacled men, women, and children — yes, shipload after 
shipload, year after year, of children — were sold to planters in the 
West Indies, Brazil, or other Spanish possessions, where those who 
sold and those who enslaved, and the managers of and the stock- 
holders in the ships, generally in some Northern home luxuriously 
reveling in their blood-bought wealth, all knew that these slaves 
would be not only ill-treated, but deliberately worked to death to 
prevent the burden of their decrepit old age resting upon the mas- 
ters."' Private individuals alone did not reap tJie profits. The 
three-pound tax on imported slaves laid by Ehode Island in 1708, 
"was laid to enable the Colonial government to obtain a share of the 
profits of the trade ; the Newport streets were first paved out of the 
proceeds of that tax." In 1703 "close-fisted" Massachusetts slave- 
owners began to "manumit aged or infirm slaves to relieve the mas- 
ter from the charge of supporting them.""" It is interesting to 
contrast the attitude of the South on this point. In illustration I 
quote from an act passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, De- 
cember 17, 1792. Section thirty-seven of the act says, "It shall be 
lawful for any person, by his or her last will and testament, or by 
any other instrument in writing, under his or her hand and seal, . . . 
to emancipate and set free hi's or her slaves, or any of them, who 
shall thereupon . . . enjoy as full freedom as if they had been par- 
ticularly named and freed by this Act." In section thirty-eight it 



2780bservations on Negroes (Germantown, 1760), p. 
2"Spears, Am. Slave Trade, 50. 
="«Ib., 51 ; Alison, History Europe, Vol. IT., 49.8. 
'""Spears, Am. Slave Trade, 92. 



130 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

was "Provided always. That all slavefe so set free, not being in the 
judgment of the Court of sound mind and body, or being above the 
age of forty-five years, or being males under the age of twenty-one, 
or females under the age of eighteen years, shall respectively be 
supported and maintained by the person so liberating them, or by 
his ov her estate; and upon neglect or refusal to do so, the Court 
of the County or Corporation where such neglect or refusal may be, 
is hereby empowered and required upon application to them made 
to order the sheriff or other officer to distrain and sell so much of 
the person's estate, as shall be sufficient for that purpose.'""" But 
in New England private and public fortunes were made from the 
slave traffic, yet Korthern ma'sters turned out unsalable or aged 
slaves to die on public charity or in want ! 

The social relations between the two races at the North were on 
no higher moral grounds than at the South. The Massachusetts 
act of 1705 declared that it "was 'to better prevent spurious or 
mixt issue.' It is shocking to learn that the young men of Puritan 
blood were so fond of the black brissies," says Mr. Spears. Long- 
fellow, in his "The Quadroon Girl," meant to point the finger of 
scorn at the Southern planter ; but mutatis mutandis, and the verses 
are quite as applicable to the poet's otvti New England blood. I 
venture to present the same scene in New England : 

The Slaver in the quiet hay 

Lay moored with idle sail ; 
He waited for the fading day 

And for the evening gale. 

The Spinner novo hy /ris paying loom 

Smoked thoughtfully and slow; 
The Slaves- turned from the room. 

He seemed in haste to go. 

Before them with her face upturned, 

In timid attitude, 
Like one half curious, Imlf amazed, 

A Quadroon maiden stood. 

" The soil is barren, the climate cold," 
The thoughtful Spinner said; 
Then looked upon the SLiver's gold. 
And then upon the maid. 



2»>Col. of Acts General Assembly of Virginia, 1794, p. 200. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 131 

His heart within him was at strife 

With such accursed gains; 
For he knew whose passions gave her life, 

Whose blood ran in her veins. 

But the voice of nature ^^as too weak. 

He took the glittering gold! 
Then pale as death grew the maiden's cheek, 

Her hands as icy cold. 

The Slaver led her from the door. 

He led her by the hand, 
To be his slave and paramour 

In a strange and distant land. 

An ex-Union officer, born in Ohio of negro parentage, gives un- 
impeachable evidence that the morals of Northern white men had 
not improved with flight of years. He saj-te, "It may have been the 
outcroppings of gi-atitude to Federal victors, or reckless abandon to 
lust, but the inciting cause is immaterial, so long as the shameful 
fact is true, that, whenever our armies were quartered in the South, 
the negro women flocked to their camps for infamous riot with the 
white soldiers. All occupied cities, suburban rendezvous, and rural 
bivouacs, bore witness to the mad havoc daily wrought in black wo- 
manhood by our citizen soldiery. We have personal knowledge," 
continues this writer, "of many Federal officers of high station, and 
some of strong prejudices against tlie race, who openly kept negro 
mistresses in their army quarters ; nor do we doubt that the present 
lax morality everywhere observable among negro womankind is 
largely due to the licentious freedom which the war engendered 
among them. Slavery had its blighting evils, but also its wholesome 
restraints."''^ 

In the census of 1860, we are told, "Comparing the Northern 
section with the Southern, a greater proportion of mulattoes is 
found in the free States.'""" 

To return to tlie Massachusetts enactment. "The act was really 
designed to enable the colonies to share in the profits of the slave 
trade, and to encourage slavers in making Boston a clearing house. 



2»iWilliam Hannibal Thomas, The American Negro, 14 (The Macmlllan Co., 
1901). 

282Vol. on Population, X. 



J 32 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

SO to speak, for the slave trade of the whole continent.'"*' Con- 
cerning the laAvs relative to the slave trade in New Jersey, the same 
author says, "And all this is to say, with emphasis, that the prohi- 
bitive legislation of New Jersey, as of some other communities, was 
placed strictly on business considerations. The only question really 
was. Which in the end will pav the best^ — white or black serv- 
ants ?"=" 

The prohibitive legislation in Pennsylvania plainly says it was 
enacted because of fear of slave insurrection. "It was sheer cow- 
ardice of conscientious t)Tants that animated those Pennsylvania 
legi'slators," Spears adds. In the early history of South Carolina 
we find a prohibition from the same motive. Henoe, that the moral 
eide of slavery ever had any Aveight in bettering the condition of 
the slave on the American continent, or in suppressing the slave 
trade, is purely a manufactured claim invented by recent historians 
to give a semblance of sanctity to the greatest purely political war 
of the world. "Not one act passed by a colonial legislature showed 
any appreciation of the intrinsic evil in the [slave] trade or tended 
to extirpate it from the seas — not one." 

In 1800 Congressman Brown, of Ehode Island, stood in his place 
m tlie nation's legislature, and said, "We want money; we want 
money; we ought, therefore, to use the meanfe to obtain it. Why 
should we see Great Britain getting all the slave trade to them- 
selves — why not our country be enriched by that lucrative traffic ?""' 
All this — and the vast deal not here intimated — justified the South, 
during all the years of the long struggle and through all the bitter 
debates, in her position : "Let him tliat is guiltless cast the first 
etone." To the historian of to-day the voice of a loyal South im- 
plores, Tell the whole story ; tell of the millions of property stolen 
and spirited away North ; tell of the hellish slave trade which filled 
the places which were thus made vacant. 

"\Yrite! and tell of this bloody tale, 
Record this dire eclipse, 
Tliis day of Wrath, this Endless \Yail, 

This dire Apocalypse." — Longfellon. 



s^Spears, Am. Slave Trade, 93. 
="Ib.. 94. 
»8qb., 116. 



NORTHERN REBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSIOX. 133 

The notoriou's abolitioinist, Helper, whose writing's were a fire- 
orand of treachery and infamy, is said to have been chiefly instru- 
mental in inducing support in Congress for a bill requiring all ne- 
gro.es, destined for the then Territory of Louisiana, to enter through 
a port of the United States before landing in that Territory. 
Whatever the motive for this law may have been, at least it fur- 
nishes us some valuable statistics. This law drove most of the 
slaves bound for the Spanish plantations in the Louisiana Territory 
to enter at a South Carolina port, from whence they could proceed 
to ISTew Orleans and sell the slaves into the interior. As a result, 
from 1804 to 1807 inclusive, 202 ships entered 39,075 African 
slaves. This was the largest importation of slaves to America 
during any period of similar lengili up to 1860. But it was only a 
small part of the slaves captured, handled, and sold mainly by 
ISTorthern slavers. As importations to America began to be dan- 
gerous, owing to the Federal prohibition which shortly after the 
last above date went into effect, the Northern slavers, who', as sev- 
eral times said, all the while had sold a large per cent, of their ne- 
groes out of the colonies and later the United States, increased 
their traffic to the West Indie's, Brazil, or elsewhere, and sold their 
captives to a more brutal servitude than the worst example which 
existed in the South. The four years of entry thrO'Ugh Charleston's . 
( S. C.) custom-house are significant: 

"These ships were divided as follows : 'From Connecticut, 1 ; Bos- 
ton, 1; Norfolk, 2; Baltimore, 4; Ehode Island, 59; Charleston, 
61; Sweden, 1; France, 3; Great Britain, 70.' There were only 
sixty-one ships nominally hailing from Northern ports engaged in 
the trade [to the Territory of Louisiana and the South alone] . But 
when one looks to see who reaped the profits it appears that of the 
consignees of those slavers '88 were natives of Ehode Island, 13 
of Charleston, 10 of France, and 91 of Great Britain.' " As the 
years went by this small per cent, of Southerners engaged in the 
slave trade fell off to practically nothing, France and Great Brit- 
ain became the friend of the negro, while it remained for the North 
to continue the trade. Little or no effort was made in that section 
to execute the laws passed by Congress in prohibition of the trade. 
The courts practically upheld the slavers. If one will take the time 
to examine the reported cases, this fact will be apparent. A single 



134 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

slave voyage, great as was the fatality on board slavers, yielded 
about $12,000 profit. In later years long after the trade had be- 
come unlawful, the few captures that were made were held in so 
light bonds that the bond could be forfeited, as was nearly always 
done, and then leave a handsome profit of several thousand dollars. 
Bond in the sum of $200, and in a few cases $5,000, was required. 
Even the latter sum, required only in some cases in later years, 
left a clear profit of about $7,000. But the motet startling feature 
of the judicial side is that perhaps 80 or 90 per cent, of the cases 
against those who plied the trade, were either dismissed without a 
trial, or if tried found not guilty. This last was not the result of 
insufficient evidence, either.'"' And tliis is the history of slaver 
trials in Northern courts, too! In looking over these judicial pro- 
ceedings, it will strike one that in many of the cases where the par- 
ties engaged in any given voyage were acquitted or the case against 
them dismissed, the ship itself was condemned and sold. The ex- 
planation is that in cases against the ship informers were paid, and 
the successful prosecutor received a reward, while there was no re- 
ward for informing againet the crew or the owner! Verily, the 
Yankee has always had an eye open for money. For money he 
would condemn an unconscious ship; while the hand that guided 
^t, and the conscienceless brain that had planned the voyage, went 
"scott free \" The Yankee has ever been a shrewd business man ! 

The courts and their officers were not alone particeps criniinis; 
merchants and business men increased the profits on many voyages 
by combining captured or purchased negroes with the legitimate 
part of the cargo. Dr. W. Ei. B. Du Bois, some time fellow of Har- 
vard University, has given a strong picture in this connection. He 
says, "The fitting out of slavers became a flourishing biisiness in 
the United States, and centered at New York city. 'Few of our 
readers,' writes a periodical of the day, 'are aware of the extent to 
which this infernal traffic is carried on by vessels clearing from New 
York and in close alliance with our legitimate trade; and that down- 
town merchants of wealth and respectability are extensively engaged 
in .buying and selling African Negroes, and have been, with com- 
paratively little interruption, for an indefinite number of years.' " 
In 1852' the British consul reported, "Almost all the slave expedi- 



"SDu Bois, Suppression of the American Slave Trade. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 135 

tions for some time past, have been fitted out in the United States, 
chiefly at New York.""*' Another periodical says, " 'The number 
of persons engaged in the slave trade, and the amoTint of capital 
embarked in it, exceed our powers of calculation. The city of New 
York has been until late [1862] the principal port of the world for 
this infamous commerce; although the cities of Portland and Boston 
are only second to her in that distinction. Slave-dealers add largely 
to the wealth of our commercial metropolis ; they contribute liberally 
to the treasuries of political organizations, and their bank accounts 
were largely depleted to carry elections in New Jer'sey, Pennsyl- 
vania, and Connecticut.' During the eighteen months of the years 
1859-1860 eighty-five slavers are reported to have been fitted out in 
New York harbor, and these alone transported from 30,000 to 60,- 
000 slaves annually. The United States deputy marshal of that dis- 
trict declared in 1856 that the business of fitting O'ut slavers Vas 
never prosecuted with greater energy than at the present. The oc- 
casional interposition of the legal authorities exercises no apparent 
influence for its suppression. It is seldom that one or more vessels 
cannot be designated at the wharves, respecting which there is evi- 
dence that she is either in or has been concerned in the Traffic' "^ 
In 1857, scarce three years before the final crisis, England captaired 
twenty-one slave ships belonging to citizens of the North, United 
States of America.''* 

Most important and most significant is the fact that these ships 
were not engaged in trading their captured negroes to the citizens 
of the United States. For twenty year's very few negroes had been 
shipped from Africa to America. Fresh Africans were too easily 
detected; they were semi-wild, and knew nothing of the English 
language. Even the trade in the earlier years came from Cuba, or 
some place where the negro had been enslaved already, and had 
learned something of the English language. March 22, 1862, Wil- 
liam H. Seward, President Lincoln's Secretary of State, in an 
official communication to Lord Lyons, of E.ngland, said, "On re- 
viewing the history of that [the slave] trade during the period which 



28^House Executive Doc, 34 Cong., 1 sess., XII., No. 105, p. 38. 
==ssSuppression of the Slave Trade, 178-9 ; Wilson, The Rise of the Slave Power, 
Vol. II., 619. 

289Enc. Btr., Werner's Ed., Slave Trade, 770. 



136 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

has elapsed since the convention which was entered into between that 
government [England] and our own on the 9th day of August, 
1842, it has been found that during that time no slaves have been 
carried into the territories of Great Britain, and with the excep- 
tion of the case of the bark 'Wanderer,' none have been brought 
into the United States. But it is equally certain that large num- 
ber's of African slaves have been carried into the colonies of Spain, 
and that this infamous traffic has been mainly carried on by per- 
sons resident in other countries, including the United States, and 
under the fraudulent cover of the American flag.'"'" 

The North could have stopped this trade — aside from Federal 
regulations. The States could have prevented slavers fitting out 
in their M^aterfs. A slave ship was easily identified. The destruc- 
tion of slavery in the South was absolutely not necessary to the de- 
struction of the, import trade. As Du Bois says, "thousands were 
shipped to Brazil and hundreds to the United States" ; and he might 
truthfully have added, and thousands to many other places than 
Brazil, which made multiplied thousands as against hundreds to 
the United States. The thing of which the South complains is 
that the North insisted and insists that the war was necessary to 
make the North stop her own evils. The North shoiild first have 
conquered herself — she should have stopped this daily destruction 
of negro homes; she should have hushed the orphan's wail, the 
widow's cry — none of which Thayer, Greely, Eobinson, Emerson, 
Parker, Higgins, Seward, and other leading Northerners, seemed 
to have heard — they were too near honiie. Such men as these spent 
millions magnifying those sounds borne upon Southern breezes. 
Since 1808 the Constitution of the United States and the laws of 
Congress passed pursuant thereto, had forbidden this bloody traffic. 
It is not a little wonder to some of us that the "awakened con- 
science" of the officers of and contributors tO' such institutions as 
the emigrant aid companies, of which we shall hear later, did not 
spend a few thousands, at least, enforcing the organic laws of the 
Union against those of their own household. Du Bois says that 
the North was the fir'st to hang a slave dealer and importer; 
of course, Haman was himg |)y his king, but the king had sanc- 
tioned, for mone}', Haman's crime. Such is the inconsistency of 



2»«Ex. Doc. No. 5't 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 137 

avaricious nature! Even when the notorious slaver was hanged it 
raised a storm of indignation and popular protest. Capt. Nathan 
Gordon, a citizen of Maine, was captured on the coast of Africa 
with a slave ship from New York. This was in 18G0. He had on 
board eight hundred negroes destined for some slave market. He 
was tried in a New York Federal court, charged with piracy under 
a law passed by Congress in 1820. He was convicted, sentenced, 
and finally hanged. New York citizens made eyery effort to save 
him through the courts. "Nor was that all that was done to save 
him. Threats were made that a rescuing mob to storm the jail 
would be raised — ^threats that were really ominous, for that was a 
day when innocent negroes were hanged to lamp posts by a New 
York mob." So says Spears.'" And then tell me that the North 
waged the Civil War because of an awakened conscience ! It must 
have had a good nap before the rude "awaking," since this law 
under which Gordon was executed had been on the statute books 
for forty long years ! No wonder the South discredited Northern 
professions of interest for the welfare of the negro. Gordon was 
hanged forty years too late. 

Very much is often said about the coastwise and interstate trade 
in the South, and the selling of slaves from one master to another. 
While this custom was sometimes abused, yet as a matter of fact it 
furnished no more instances of abuse and misuse than some of the 
labor institutions and industries of this very day. The most en- 
lightened families must part; but on many hundreds of planta- 
tions, generation after generation of slave's succeeded each other 
without a sale. Husband and wife were seldom parted, and young 
children were left with their parents. The slave-drivers, as those 
who bought and sold negroes were called, had no standing with the 
best people in the South. No matter how white he was, the slave 
dealer was not even permitted to eat at the table with the l^etter 
families. 

Dr. Wilson, President of Princeton University, says, "Slavery 
showed at its worst where it was most seen l)y ol^servers from the 
North, — upon its edges . . . but in the heart of the South conditions 
were different, were more normal. Domestic slaves were almost 
uniformly dealt with indulgently and even affectionately by their 



2»iAm. Slave Trade, 221 ; Roosevelt, New York, 204. 



138 NOKTHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

masters. . . . 'On principle, in habit, even on the grounds of self- 
interest, the greater part of the slave-owTiers were humane in the 
treatment of their slaves, — kind, indulgent, not over-exacting, and 
sincerely interested in the physical well-being of their depend- 
ents,' — is the judgment of an eminently competent northern ob- 
server who visited the South in 1844. 'Field hands' came constantly 
imder the master's eye, M^ere comfortably quartered, and were kept 
from overwork both by their own laziness and by the slack disci- 
pline to which they were subjected." Again the same writer ob- 
serves: "Probably the most demoralizing feature of the system, 
taken as a whole, was its effect on the marriage relation among the 
negroes. It sometimes happened that husbands were sold away 
from their wives, children away from their parents ; but even this 
evil was in most instances checked by the wisdom and moral feel- 
ing of the slave-owners. Even in the ruder communities public 
opinion demanded that when negroes were sold, families should be 
kept together, particularly mother's and their children. Slave- 
dealers were universally detested, and even ostracized ; and the do- 
mestic slave trade was tolerated only because it was deemed neces- 
sary for economic distribution of the slave population.'"'" 

Alexander Black, a reputable and reliable historian of Northern 
proclivities, says that the harder States "presented probably the 
least offensive form of slavery. The conditions of life in Kentucky 
favored a domestic kind of servitude tinder which the slaves dis- 
played little discontent. In Virginia slavery never revealed its most 
objectionable traits; and throughout the river counties of both 
States the treatment of the slaves was so humane that a relatively 
small number accepted the river's invitation to escape.'"^' Here, 
then, is eminent testimony that neither upon "its edges" nor "in 
the heart of the So'uth" was sla.very what agitators were continually 
representing it to be. A-S the agitation went on, the South grad- 
ually was being led out for execution upon false testimony. 

Many histories paint in stunning colors the value and great num- 
bers of the domestic slave trade. Yet, deplorable as it now and 
then was, when the worst is told, even if we take the most flagrant 
cases, those that are admittedly exceptions, as a measure, these evils 



^''i'Division and Reunion (1893), 12.5, 126, V. 
^''^The Story of Ohio, 215. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 139 

did not begin to compare with tlie murders, deaths from torture, 
parting of families, wholesale destruction of children, and the ac- 
cursed stench that rose from the trade on the 'seas like a death mist 
which filled the nostrils of the civilized world, making our flag a by- 
word and an emblem of piracy. Both sections, it is true, had their 
sins; but what was a mote in the eye of the South, became a beam 
in the Korthem eye, upon which rode the chief of the Harpies 
whose bony hand reeked with blood while hi's treachery fattened — 
not figuratively, but literally — the sharks of the ocean on women 
and babies. 

Let us look for a moment at some figures, and see if our asser- 
tions are well founded. We can never know the full extent of the 
shipments by the N"oTth; the greater part was done clandestinely, 
and never saw the light of a record. But enough is known to en- 
able us to get a glimpse which is very significant. Virginia and 
So'uth Carolina were the great slave-producing and selling States. 
During one of Virginia's best years of the trade, she sold 40,000. 
These were sold to planters in the United States. We can make an 
interesting estimate of what was the part of the Northern trade in 
negroes, and may have an idea of the number sold mostly to worse 
masters than those found in the States, from the following slavers 
and the number that each cai-ried at the date given : 

Slaves 
Year. Name of Vessel and Where From. Carried. 

1841 SOPHIA, of New ^ork, snipped to Brazil one trip 750 

1844 SOOY, of Newport, Rhode Island, captured with 600 

1847 FAME, of Connecticut, landed in Brazil 700 

1847 SENATOR, of Boston, Mass., landed in Brazil 944 

1850 MARTHA, of New York, captured while about to embark. 1,800 

1850 LUCY ANN, of Boston, Mass 547 

185.3 CAMARGO, of Portland, Me., landed in Brazil 500 

1854 GLAMORGAN, of New York, about to embark 700 

1860 THE ERIE, from a Northern port, captured with 897 

1864 HUNTERS, of New York 500 

Ten vessels carried a total of 7,938 

This leaves on the average for a vessel, not counting fractions, 
793 slaves. This I believe to be an underestimate. In 1838 the 
Venus embarked 1,100 slaves and landed 860 of them;''* and about 

='*DaA'id Turnbull, of Eng., Cuba (London, 1848), 436. 



140 NOETHERN EEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

1854 another American slave ship, the Bender, landed 800 in South 
America. '°' In the colonial days very small crafts carried nearly a 
thousand. They were often packed like bags of salt on the water 
kegs, or pinned by heavy irons to the floors, in Such a manner as 
to make life very uncertain. So that the above list is selected to 
show what the ship in the later days of the trade carried. I might 
extend the list to thousands, but since we can only get an estimate 
at best, this will answer. Within little more than a year, we have 
seen that eighty-five fitted out from one port. If one port furnished 
so many, it will be entirely safe to estimate one hundred from all 
the ports of the one State; this gives one Korthem State alone an 
enslavement of over 111,000 people, estimating one trip per year. 
But a vessel could make two trips a year, which gives us 223,000 
human beings both enslaved and sold by the citizens of a single 
State. This is more than five times the number sold by Virginia 
alone, and more than twice as many as sold in any one year by both 
Virginia and South Carolina, the two most extensive slave-trading 
States in the South. 

If we take the earlier stages of the slave trade l)y the North, the 
figTires are very much more in excess of those of the Southern trade. 
For instance, as early as 1770 Rhode Island had one hundred and 
fifty vessels engaged in the trade. Incredible as it seems to us, 
these early crafts, small as they were, were made to carry from 200 
to 800, and even more, slaves. If we make the very conservative 
estimate by allowing only 200 slaves carried by each vessel in the 
year, we have this one State enslaving 30,000 people. 

Bancroft says, "The horrors of the passage corresponded with 
the infamy of the trade. Small vessels of little more than two hun- 
dred tons' burden, were prepared for the traffic. ... In such a bark 
five hundred negroes and more have been stowed, exciting wonder 
that men could have lived within the tropics, cribbed in so few 
inches room . . . death hovered always over the slave ship.""° 

From what I have said, the young student must not conclude 
that no Southerner engaged in the slave trade. A few did. Now 
and then a vessel fitted out from New Orleans, or Norfolk, or a 
South Carolina port. But it was not uncommon that vessels had 



^^'Edw. VPilberforce, of Eng. Navy, Brazil (London, 1856), p. 20. 
^'SGeo. Bancroft, History U. S., Vol. II., p. 272-3. 



NOKTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 141 

Southern names, for instance, the KENTUCKY, which belonged 
exclusive!}^ to Northern men ; and so not all those that purported to 
be Southern were really so. We noticed this in the report from the 
harbor record of Charleston given previously. Now and then a 
Southern man, occasionally one of prominence, like Gov. D. B. 
Mitchell, who resigned the office of governor of hi's State, engaged 
in slave-smuggling. The number of such men and the number of 
vessels were so inconsiderable, considering those which were the 
bona fide propei-ty of Southern men, that they have little import- 
ance except in the coast-wise trade, which was not an import trade, 
and which has already been noticed. In the case of Governor 
Mitchell, it must not be forgotten that he was prosecuted under a 
charge brought by Governor Clark, governor of the State of Georgia. 
His case was most certainly exceptional. No State was making a 
more honest effort to stop the importing of negroes than was 
Georgia. Mitchell's offence was alleged to have been committed in 
the fall and winter of 1817. In aid of the constitutional prohibi- 
tion of Georgia, her legislature had passed some very rigid laws, 
and only a few months before the Mitchell case, about 1816, one of 
these made the importing of negroes a penitentiary offence. At the 
time, ]\Iitchell was Indian agent, to which he had been appointed 
by tJie President on his resignation from the governorship. This 
is why the papers in the case were preseaated to the Senate May 6, 
1822. The original record is worth reading."" 

Another case was that of the Wanderer which Mr. Seward said 
was the only exception during the twenty years immediately pre- 
ceding the Civil War. She was built in New England, fitted out in 
New York, officered by the North, and had Col, John Egbert Ear- 
num, bom in New Jersey, educated in Penn., an active Union officer 
in the war, as her captain. Of her crew only one was a Southern 
man. C. A. T;. Lantar, of Georgia, was interested in her cargo, which 
was landed in Ga. Every effort to bring the guilty parties to jus- 
tice was used by Gen. Henry E. Jackson, of Georgia, who was ably 
assisted by the daring Lucien Peyton, of Virginia. Jackson's speech 
reviewing the history of the case, delivered in Atlanta some years 
ago, has become a classic. 



^"American State Papers : Misa., Vol. II., 958. 



VIII. 

LEGALITY OF FIRST KANSAS ELECTIONS. 

THEIR RELATION TO THE CIVIL WAR; FACTS FROM ORIGINAL RECORDS. 

We have been looking at Northern objections to the bill 0}5ening 
the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska for settlement. I have 
given my view of the true motives which actuated a great body of 
the North, and which dictated their political position. We come 
now to a stage of our investigation in which it will be seen that the 
designs against the South and her political power took a decidedly 
more aggressive form. By the passage of the bill opening the new 
Territory, the majority voice in the nation's legislature declared in 
favor of the doctrine that each State or Territory should manage 
its own domestic institutions, limited only by the Constitution of 
the United States. Up to that time the fight between the two sec- 
tions had been waged in Congress and through non-legislative 
means. The North now despaired of carrying their ends in tlie 
national legislature, and determined to turn their batteries against 
the Territories. It wa's recognized that local elections would de- 
termine the political complexion of Congress. The North was 
afraid to leave the emigration and settlement of the new Territories 
to normal, natural causes. Southern political power, supplemented 
by numerous representatives from the North, was in the ascendency. 
The North saw that if she let the people go and make homes in the 
new country and frame constitutions as inclination and local in- 
terests led, that that meant an end of her political ambitions; so 
she determined to seize the embr}^o States, honestly if she might, 
"at all hazards" if need be. Of course, while the fight for Northern 
views was being hotly waged in the national legislature, much fuss 
was made about the negro, and a greater or less effort made to in- 
duce the world to believe that the fight was in his behalf. But the 
truth was, that this movement was as much anti-negro as anti- 
slavery, — a movement wholly devoid of any social, civil, or moral 
consideration for the negro, bond or free. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 143 

Without, perhaps, exactly seeing the force of what he said, Mr. 
Eli Thayer, one of the mO'St prominent and aggressive JSTortheni 
men of his day, admits that all the Kansas trouble grew out of the 
unwillingness to trust the majority voice of the people because its 
largest influence came from the South, or was in accord with views 
agreeable to Southern statesmen. In his book covering the Kansas 
struggle, he says, "On May 30, 1854, the Kansas-Kebraska bill, con- 
taining the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was signed by 
President Pierce, and became the law of the land. . . . The slave 
states, with thirty-five years of political supremacy and the pres- 
tige of the last great victory over the North, with perfect discipline 
and irresistible power, were confident of undisputed control in the 
government for generation's to come. ... In a few years her Sena- 
tors in Congress would nearly do'uble the number from the N'orth. 
Their skill in diplomacy and politics, acquired by unremitting prac- 
tice and study, much excelled that of the Northern people. ... No 
wonder that we were helpless and hopeless . . . the apprehension be- 
came despondency, and the alarm became despair." 

The mere fact that the South "for thirty-five years" had enjoyed 
political supremacy, justified the North in no act which did not 
fully accord with the right and legal use of the ballot. All these 
were years of prosperity ; it is not disputed that during all this time 
Northern industrial development knew no bounds. Yet, as a 
remedy for this political despair, what did the protesting faction 
propose? Failing at the ballot, what remedy was to be sought? 
Declaiming against the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, a few 
days before its passage, the New York Tribune, as quoted by Con- 
gressmen who read the signs of the times aright as they appeared 
on the horizon, said, "We urge, therefore, unbending determination 
on the part of Northern members hostile to this intolerable outrage, 
and demand of them, in behalf of peace — in behalf of freedom — in 
behalf of justice and humanity — resistance to the last. Better that 
confusion shall ensue in the national councils — better that Congress 
shmld break up in wild disorder — nay, better that the Capitol it- 
self should blaze by the torch of the incendiary, or fall and bury 
all its inmates beneath itfe crumbling ruins, than that this perfidy 
and wrong should be finally accomplished."'"' The New York Cou- 



2«8Cong. Globe, 34 Cong., 1 sess., 724. 



144 NOETHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

rier and Enquirer, June 26, 1856, editorially said, "The remedy is, 
to go to the polls, and through the ballot-box repudiate the infa- 
mous platform put forth at Cincinnati [by the Democratic conven- 
tion], and over which the black flag of slavery waves with charac- 
teristic impudence; and failing in this \i. e., if defeated at the bal- 
lot] do as our fathers did before us — stand by our inheritable rights, 
and drive haxh with arms those who dare to trample upon our in- 
heritance. There is no boasting and no threat in this. It is the 
calm language of honest, conscientious, and determined freemen, 
wafted to us by every breeze from tJie West; and they are already 
acting in strict conformity with their avowed determination.""" 
"They are already acting." To whom does this writer, represen- 
tative of the party to which he belongs, refer? He refers to the 
West — to the actions of those who are in accord with his doctrine 
who are carrying out his plan in, Kansas. Listen to the responsive 
echo from Kansas : the Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Kansas, the 
official organ of the free-State-abolition movement, details of which 
are shortly to be given, exclaims, "Come one, come all, slavocrats 
and nullifiers; we have rifles enough, and bullets enough, to send 
you all to your (Judas') own place! If you are coming, why don't 
you come along ?"^°° Were it possible to mistake this plain language, 
that of General James Watson Webb, at the time editor of the New 
York Courier and Enquirer, would settle the doubt: "They tell us 
that they are willing to abide by the ballot-box, and willing to make 
that the last appeal. If we fail there, what then? We will drive it 
hacTc, stvord in hand, and so help me God! believing that to he 
right, I am ivith them." ["Loud cheers and cries of, Good."]^" 

Every man who believes he is right, may act. But he does so at 
his peril. An impartial world must sit in judgment upon his Jus- 
tification or excusability ; and if his belief shall be seen to have been 
without adequate foundation or improperly reached, he is either a 
criminal, an unfair and dishonest man, or a fanatic, as the facts 
may detennine. The fugitive slave laws, especially that of 1850, 
and the Kansas-Nebraska bill, are the admitted grounds for the 
proposed Northern action. From what has preceded, most certainly 



s^oQuoted in Cong. Globe. lb., 728. 

300 J b 

'"■Quoted in App'dx Cong. Globe, lb., 728. 



NOKTHERN EEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 145 

taken in connection with facts yet to be examined, the untenability 
of tlie objections to each of these measures will be undeniably ap- 
parent. I further maintain that there is one thing beyond cavil, 
and that is that this position of this dangerous Northern faction 
was proposed rebellion — and rebellion against the lawful govern- 
m^ent, the Constitution and laws of Congress pursuant thereto; and 
a rebellion against the majority will of the whole people of the 
Union who yet supported that Constitution and those laws which 
that party held objectionable, which were passed by virtue of the 
authority vested in Congress by that Constitution. Since rebellion 
is "deliberate organized resistance, by force and arms, to the laws 
or operations of a government, by those who owe it obedience," as 
the evidence is presented it will prove that, having failed at the bal- 
lot, the resistance was carried out by organized armed force, and so 
passed from proposed to overt, sanguinary rebellion. 

That the Constitution and the objectionable laws were yet 
supported by the greater number of people, the Whig and Demo- 
cratic votes of 1852, in approval of their party platforms, prove as 
only such things can be proven under republican governments. 

The Whig platform, upon which General Scott asked the votes of 
the people, declared, "8. Eesolved, That the series of acts of the 
Thirty-first Congress, commonly known as the compromise or ad- 
justment acts (the act for the recovery of fugitives from labor in- 
cluded), are received and acquiesced in by the Whigs of the United 
States, as a final settlement in principle and substance of the sub- 
ject's to which they relate. . . . And we deprecate all further agi- 
tation of the questions thus settled as dangerous to our peace." 
The Democrats stood upon the declaration, "9. That Congress has 
no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the 
domestic institutions of the several States . . . the Democratic party 
. . . will abide by and adhere to, a faithful execution of the acts 
known as tJie compromise measures, settled by the last Congress, 
and the act for reclaiming fugitives from service or labor included, 
which act, being designed to carry out an express provision of the 
Constitution cannot, with fidelity thereto, be repealed, or so 
changed as to destroy its efficacy." Mr. Pierce represented this 
party. Upon these announced principles the parties went before 
the country with the result that — 
10 



146 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Pierce received 1,6-40,260 

Scott 1,423,954 

! Total, 3,063,214 

The principle, thus eudorsed, of the compromise acts of 1850, 
was "non-intervention by Congress in the domestic affairs of the 
States and Territories"; and upon this principle fixed then and 
there vi'as set a precedent by leaving Utah and New Mexico to set- 
tle their several internal or domestic affairs, including that of negro 
servitude; and in addition to this. Congress decided, "in principle 
and substance," to enforce the Constitutional fugitive slave provi- 
sions, wdiich legislation was in full harmony with the teachings of 
such great constitutional expoimders as Daniel Webster. These 
were the principles which over three and one-half millions of the 
sovereign voters si>ecifically endorsed, and upon which they declared 
they wanted all further legislation, without agitation, based. The 
little handful of less than tw^o hundred thousand — it being one 
wing of the abolition faction calling themselves Free-Democracy, 
who opposed this great majority, did nothing less than declare in 
favor of rebellion. Hear them : John P. Hale was their candidate, 
and their platform declared that, "5 . . . our distinct and final an- 
swer is, no more slave State's — no slave territory. . . . That the 
fugitive slave act of 1850 is repugnant to the Constitution — to the 
principles of American law. . . . We therefore deny ite binding 
force upon the American people . . . the purpose of the Free-Democ- 
racy is, to take possession of the Federal Government." 

This minority declaration became the avowed doctrine and pur- 
pose of the free-State abolition movement. All the fire and fury 
aimed at the Kansas-Kebraska bill — a bill in full harmony with the 
views of more than three millions of Whigs and Democrats — took 
this same position; the comparatively small Garrison party, the 
most pronounced secession-abolitionists, joined their mad howl to 
this protest. To back it armed rebellion instigated and carried out 
by Northerners spilled the first fraternal blood of America. Out of 
the din of battle, out of the combination of all sources of abolition, 
sprang the same old clamor from the mouths of the Lincoln Eepub- 
licans. These last finally won the control of the gO'vernment, but 
in direct opposition to the protests of nearly one million majority 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 147 

of the free^, sovereign, voters of our country. ISTorthern rebellion 
in theory and then in organized armed resistance, preceded South- 
ern Secession. 

Even before tlie pas'sage of the Kansas-ISTebraska bill, the spirit 
of resistance found bold leaders who prepared to move do^vn upon 
the borders of the enemy. Kansas offered several advantages for 
practical operations; they resolved to dominate the politics of the 
Territory and mould her into a State after their own conceptions 
let the cost be what it might; the sequel proved that they meant to 
dominate her ballot-box, peaceably if they could, at all hazards and 
regardless of existing laws if need be. Those were found who stub- 
bornly contested every inch of the mad field, and thus Kansas be- 
came the scene of bloodshed and bitter sectional war — "tlie prelude 
to the great Civil War." Charles Eobinson, one of the chief iSTortli- 
ern actors, and whose writings are held in much repute by a certain 
clas's at this day, writing of the attitude of his party after the pas- 
sage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, says, "There was now but one way 
of salvation for Kansas [to become anti-Sonthern in sentiment], 
and that was not through the legislative, executive, or judicial de- 
partments of the Government, through anti-slavery societies or po- 
litical organizations, but the promise land, as of old, must be se- 
cured by taking possession of it, or not at all." 

The methods used in taking this "possession," the results and in- 
cidents of her first Territorial elections, the struggle between the 
t^'O factions after the first elections, and the part taken by the 
North, — all generally grossly and persistently misrepresented, — 
give us some of the most important overt acts on the part of the 
North, which, since their repetition became constantly more pos- 
sible, justified secession. Not only illegal voting, but looting, re- 
bellion against both local and United States governments, and mur- 
der, fill the annals of the Kansas struggle from 1854 to — in fact, 
it may be correctly said, the close of the Civil War. Alex. Johnson, 
some time professor of jurisprudence and political economy in 
Princeton (New Jersey) University, of this period, says, "... the 
struggle passed into a real civil war, the two powers mustering con- 
siderable armies, fighting battles, capturing towns, and paroling 



3»2The United States (Scribners, 1889), 201. 



148 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

ondarily by reason of the slavery interest, unremittingly have been 
held responsible for all this evil and confusion. I am going to pre- 
sent evidence which I maintain shows that the charge is without 
adequate foundation. 

When the bill opening the Territories became operative, the 
President appointed the first officers. These officers entered the 
Territory of l-Cansas in November, 1854, and at once entered upon 
the duties of government. It was early necessary to elect a Terri- 
torial representative to Congress; each new territory is allowed one 
representative, who may speak for her, but not vote. Governor 
Eeeder, formerly of Pennsylvania, who was the Presidential ap- 
pointee, issued rules and designated voting places and ordered this 
election for November 29, 1854. It was also necessary to elect a 
legislative body, whose duty it would be to frame a constitution, or 
provide for such work, upon which the Territory would ask to be- 
come a State. This election for legislators was ordered for March 
30, 1855. It will at once be seen that this election promised to be 
the most exciting, since it would determine whether the State 
should have its policy and fundamental laws moulded according to 
New England ideas or should follow recognized Southern policies. 
The triumph of the New England party, or Northern party, called 
free-State, anti-Slavery men, abolitionists, etc., meant strength 
in Congress for a repetition of the ruinous tariff of 1828-'32; it 
meant a partisan expenditure of public treasure to further purely 
Northern enterprises; it meant the restriction of Southern emi- 
gration; and necessarily, the untimely restriction in the United 
States of territorial slavery, which by no means meant a mitigation 
of the evils of slavery. It meant, worst of all, a crusade into South- 
em States in such a way as to endanger female virtue, life, and 
property, to say nothing of the threatened danger to local State con- 
trol by those who had not come to make the place permanent homes. 
Upon these issues the powers joined in battle at the ballot. Of these 
first elections let me quote you what historians are teaching our 
young people. The reader will then be in a position better to judge 
for himself as to the value and reliability of some modem text- 
books and popular histories, — in so far as they treat of acts, move- 
ments, or issues which led to the Civil War. 

Usual version of earlv Kansas elections : — 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 149 

In a school histoTj published in 1900 by one of our largest text- 
book houses, we have this statement vouched as strictly historical : 

"The settlers who opposed slavery were soon in the majority; 
but as all the settlejnents were near the Missouri boundary, the pro- 
slavery party was reinforced by men from the latter state, who 
crossed the line and voted more than enough ballots at every elec- 
tion to counterbalance the free votes; sometimes, indeed, the num- 
ber of ballots counted was more than the whole number of votes in 
the Territory."'"' 

Another, published also by one of our largest text-book companies, 
has this to say : 

"The free-State people and the slave-State people now came into 
collision on the Kansas plains. Men from Mi'ssoiiri assisted the 
Southern party. Eival governments were formed. Kansas soon 
became the scene of a violent struggle. Midnight assassinations 
and mobs were common, and something like open war broke out 
from time to time. The men from the Northern states soon had a 
inajority, and asked admission to the Union."'"* 

And yet a third much-used history for teaching our youths, pub- 
lished by a leading text-book company, has this to give as gospel 
history : 

"The election of the member's of the territorial legislature took 
place in March, 1855. On the principle of popular sovereignty the 
people of Kansas were to decide whether the territory should be 
slave or free. Should the majority of the legislature consist of 
free-States men, then Kansas would be a free territory. Should a 
majority of pro-slavery men be chosen, then Kansas was doomed 
to have slavery fastened on her, and this the Missourians deter- 
mined should be done. For weeks before the election, therefore, the 
border counties of Missouri were all astir. Meetings were held, and 
secret societies, called Blue Lodges, were formed, the members of 
which were pledged to enter Kansas, take possession of the polls, and 
elect a pro-slavery legislature. The plan was strictly carried out, 
and as election day drew near, the Missourians, fully armed, entered 
Kansas in companies, squads, and parties, like an invading army, 
voted and then went home to Missouri. Every member of the leg- 



sosThompson's School History U. S., 260. 
so^Eggleston's History of U. S., 300. 



150 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

islature save one was a pro-slavery man, and when that body met, all 
the slave laws of Missouri were adopted, and slavery was formally 
established in Kansas.'"" 

To leave the text-books, let ns see what is said of this "invasion"' 
and the "invaders." A representative variety of these excerpts are 
proper as introductory in order to assist in properly imderstanding 
much of the following discussion. I present them to stir no im- 
pulse of resentment, but simply because fidelity to historical truth 
requires the reviewer of historical data unflinchingly to meet what- 
soever falls within his purvie^v. How much of fidelity to the facts 
the several pictures, presented by the various writers, contain, and 
whether the historian of to-day, who either partially or entirely re- 
flects their spirit or adopts their phraseology', does justice to the 
great section of whose people he writes, may be the more certainly 
determined by presenting along with what I hold to be the facts 
representative statements by accredited writer's. 

A citizen of Kansas, writing September 3, 1900, says, "The first 
elections Avere scenes of violence and disorder. The large lines of 
whiskey-sodden ruffians woimd their several ways about the prairies 
and along the streams of Kansas, took armed possession of the polls 
and voting places, cast thousands of illegal votes, perjured them- 
selves by certifying to fraudulent election returns and returned in 
a drunken frenzy to their homes in Missouri."™'^ 

Doctor Charles Eobinson says that the Northern "settlers were 
averse to resort to physical force in the settlement of any conflict 
purely moral and political"; and that these Northern men found 
that "the Devil would flee only when resisted, and that pearls were 
not suitable diet for all animals on all occasions." He also says that 
in the South and West "the man who Avould pass current as a gen- 
tleman must be prepared at all time's to protect his person and 
honor by force."'" 

Says Doctor Clark, "Those who could not submit to this ["the 
murderous assault on Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks in 1856"] 
Avere roused by the border ruffians from Missouri who invaded Kan- 
sas, and made the pro-slavery constitution for that State.""" 



so'^McMaster's History U. S.. 351. 

""^Connelley. Life of John Brown. .j6. 

s'^The Kan. Conf.. 27. 

2<"James Freeman Clark, Nineteenth Century Questions, 339. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 151 

H. von Hoist (professor at the University of Freiburg, Germany) 
says that the j\Iifesonrians published their resolutions "with brutal 
frankness," and carried out their threats "with audacity" when they 
"could appeal to nothing but tlieir own sovereign good pleasure.'""' 

Dr. J. C. y. Smith, once mayor of Boteton, claimed to have seen 
a camp of these "invading Missouri ruffians," and in describing 
them says tliat they "were young men, rough, coarse, sneering, 
swaggering, dare-devil-looking rascals as ever swnng upon a gal- 
lows. They had not a redeeming trait of character." Ajid this 
description Senator Wilson in the United States Senate com- 
mended.^'" 

The personal appearance of one of these "Missouri ruffians" as 
given by a contemporaiy will be interesting in this connection. Of 
this "border ruffian," he says, "Imagine a man standing in a pair 
of long boots, covered ^nth dust and mud, and drawn over his trous- 
ers, the latter made of coarse, fancy colored cloth, well soiled; the 
handle of a large bowie-knife projecting from one or both boot 
tops; a leathern belt buckled around his waist, on each side of 
which is fastened a large revolver ; a red or blue shirt, with a heart, 
anchor, eagle or some other favorite device braided on the breast 
and back, over which is swung a rifle or carbine ; a sword dangling 
by his side, and a chicken, goose, or turkey feather sticking in the 
top of his hat; hair imcut and uncombed, covering his neck and 
shouldere; an unshaved face and unwashed hands; who can swear 
any given number of oaths in any specified time, drink any quan- 
iity of bad whiskey without getting drunk," — and you have a picture 
of him. I have been inclined to feel that it was a mere clerical 
oversight that the tail and horns were not described. 

I might quote almost indefinitely of the feats of this mastodon- 
like "border ruffian." His actions. Doctor Clark informs us, and, 
"in truth, the course of the Southern leaders illustrated in a strik- 
ing way the distinction between a politician and a statesman. They 
were very acute politicians," he continues, "trained in all the tac- 
tics of their art; but they were poor statesmen, incapable of any 
large strategic plan of action.''*" 



s»!>History U. S., Vol. V.. 140. 

""App'dix Cong. Globe, 34 Cong., 1 sess.; 

suNineteenth Century Questions, 341. 



152 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Before I proceed furtlier let me re-state the issue; let me define 
my position; and give, as I understand it, the Southern contention. 

I do not contend, nor did tlie South ever do so, that the Nortli 
had no right to their views on slavery. I do not say, nor did tihe 
South, that a citizen who was opposed to slavery did not have a 
right hona fide to settle a new territory, and when a legal resident 
vote liis sentiments on the existence of that institution in his 
adopted State. No representative pro-slavery man ever denied to 
any representative anti-slavery citizen his legal. Constitutional 
rights. But the South insisted that unconstitutional, underhanded, 
illegal methods should not be used by N"orthern anti-slavery men. 
Such men did use or encourage dishonest, illegal methods to effect 
their objects, in numerous instances as private individuals or as 
organized societies up to and through tlie Kansas troubles; and 
during that period, both as individuals and as organized, capi- 
talized. State-legalized bodies, by 1. EFFOETS TO ILLEGALLY 
CAERY KANSAS ELECTIONS, with the view accompanied by 
overt acts, 2. TO FOLLOW THIS WITH A WEONG, IL- 
LEGAL, IMPEOPEE, AND IMMINENTLY DANGEEOUS 
ATTACK ON THE EXISTING SLAVE STATES. 

I lay down the fundamental assertion that the Southern people 
knew of all this at the time; that the North took the initiative in 
the struggle; and that whatever resulted nationally or locally was 
forced upon the Southern people. In our present investigation let 
us not forget that we now see as history what Southern citizens then 
had justifiable reasons to believe or knew as transpiring facts — pro- 
ducing conditions affecting them and their children then and tlierc. 
We are not to look at a theory, Ave are not to see things that have 
come to light in later years, we are not considering what was test 
to have been done; we are to see what was done and who acted 
first, — and I shall submit that but for which initial, unwarranted, 
action a great blot would have been spared our fair national record. 

The method by which the truth of these assertions is to be 
reached is important. I have made some very strong charge's; I 
have already quoted some very eminent authority against these very 
charges ; I have asserted that anti-slaveiy men for many years prior 
to and down to the Civil War were threatening and making overt 
demonstration against the happiness, legal rights, lives, and homes 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 153 

of the Southern people; I have asserted tliat those whom I have 
quoted touching Kansas, and alike many others, are incorrect, and 
that many things concerning the crucial epoch in American his- 
tory are generally only partially told. How are we to know whom 
to believe? I answer. By re-examining, a lawyer would say cross- 
examining, the witnesses and authority upon which writers profess 
to rely, together with an examination of all oi'iginal evidence. An 
unobscured and full presentation of the evidence available will, I 
submit, sustain my position. 

I shall begin the investigation by a cross-examination of a most 
competent and intelligent witness, and one upon which all histo- 
rians rely to a greater or less extent. On March the 19th, 1856, the 
lower HouSse of Congress appointed William A. Howard, John Sher- 
man, and M. Oliver, two of whom were Northern men and in sym- 
pathy with the ISForthem crusade, a committee of investigation, and 
directed them to go wherever necessary and to "proceed to inquire 
into, and collect evidence in regard to any fraud or force attempted 
or practiced in reference to any of the elections which have taken 
place in said Territory, either under the law organizing said Ter- 
ritory, or any pretended law which may be alleged to have taken 
effect therein since; and when the investigation shall be completed, 
to report the evidence so collected to the House." When completed, 
the reports, evidence, etc., comprise nearly two thousand printed 
pages. The investigation began with the first election, that of No- 
vember 29, 1854, and investigated all others up to the time of the 
appointment of the committee, viz. : March 30, 1855, May 23, 1855, 
October 1, 1855, and December 15, 1855. Evidence was taken from 
the New England States to the plains of Kansas, and fully cov- 
ered — as the committee was further ordered to do — not alone the 
legality of elections, but the emigrant aid movement, tlie "Blue 
Lodges of Missouri," the "Crusades of the Missourians," the ship- 
ment from the Noxth of Sharp's rifles marked "books," alleged 
murders, except the Pottowatomie massacre, etc. The witnesses 
were sworn, and several months were spent in the investigation. 
Therefore, the evidence gathered in this investigation, printed by 
the government, is one of the several reliable and most valuable 
sources of information concerning these early struggles in Kansas. 
It throws much light on the character of the dangerous aggressions 



154 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of abolition, though numerous prominent Northern writers leave 
concerning it a different impression. Mr. Sherman and Mr. How- 
ard, the Northern members, made a report containing very many 
partisan assertions based on no evidence gathered by the commit- 
tee, and by no means borne out by far the greater weight of the evi- 
dence taken. These men began the evading process, and their ex- 
ample has been servilely followed by those historians of to-day who 
have sympathized Avith the Northern movement of that day. We 
must keep in mind that the free-State men, called abolitionists 
and various other names, and their Northern abettors, had every- 
thing at stake in the finding of this congressional committee. They 
were contesting for their Kansas repre'sentative in Congress; they 
were fighting to negative the legality of the legislature chosen 
March 30, 1855. The North had charged that this legislature, com- 
posed of men Avho were Southern in views and sympathy, had been 
elected by fraud, non-resident Southern voters, whom they called 
""Missouri ruffians," and by intimidation. This legislature had 
convened at Lecompton, had "organized a government, and framed 
a constitution permitting slavery.'^ The Northern emigrants had 
held conventions in various places, had met in general conven- 
tions ; had held what purported to be elections at which they claimed 
to have chosen a legislature, and this body had met in Topeka, and 
had organized what tJiey called a government; an anti-slavery con- 
stitution was framed; and this Nortliern faction had resolved to 
stand by their work and resist the laws and acts of the authorized 
legislature, "to the bloody issue." They had organized and drilled 
military companies, had solicited and received men, money, guns, 
cannon, and other mimitions of war from the North. Previous to 
the appointment of tJii's committee, and during its investigation, 
great excitement prevailed North and South; and, if I might be 
pardoned for using Connelley's pseudo-palliative, murder and arson 
became "incidents." If the anti-slavery men were in the wrong, 
they had become rebels, and that without a shadow of justification 
or excuse. Their only claim for justification was that the elections 
had not reflected the voice of the homi, fide citizens. 

Mr. Eobinson and sijnilarly many who write from the anti- 
slavery standpoint, quote from the report of Messrs, Sherman and 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 155 

Howard; and Eobinson says their conclusions are "based upon the 
te^stimony of both parties, and is a revelation new to republican 
government.'"''' Then he proceeds to quote the honorable gentle- 
men, — but not once does he take time to give us a fair sample of 
the voluminous evidence taken in direct contradiction to their con- 
clusions. Hundreds of thousands of the report made by these gen- 
tlemen were scattered throughout the North at the time, and were 
unaccompanied by the evidence either ;j7'o or con or by the 
minority report. Opinions were formed from what was said in that 
"report, and the fact that it was not borne out by the evidence in 
much of what it said, especially when read unaccompanied by the 
evidence, could not be otherwise than imknown to many. I shall 
first quote from tlie report filed by Mr. Oliver, who was a represen- 
tative from Missouri, and then give such abstracts of the evidence 
as that it may be seen that he is fully borne out, and so that it may 
be seen that I am substantiated in my position. I shall then offer 
unimpeachable evidence corroborative to thi's in support of my in- 
dictment. Those who vn&h. to see the evidence in full must consult 
House Eeport Xo. 200, 34 Cong., 1 sess."' 

Mr. Oliver says that the report made by his colleagues did not 
have his consent; and not this only, but he further says that he 
"knew nothing of the contents or character" of "the paper in the 
nature of a report drawn" up or submitted by his colleagues "until 
it was read in the House." He alleges that this report wa's partisan 
and "that many statements therein rest upon no evidence whatever 
taken by the committee." "There is no evidence that any violence 
was resorted to, or force employed, by which men were prevented 
from voting at a single election precinct in the Territory, or that 
there A\'as any gi-eater disturbance at any election precinct 
than frequently occurs in all our state elections in exciting 
times. A number of witnesses on both sides swear that men 
on both sides had arms, guns, pistols, bowie-knives, etc., and 
made threats, etc. But no one of them swears that any one 
was prevented from noting by the uSe of these weapons in a single 



"=The Kansas Conf., 10. 

3"To the pages of this original document I refer in the following when, for 
brevity, simply "Evidence" or "Majority" or "Minority Report" is cited. Each 
of these has its own paging. Read notes at end of volume. 



156 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

instance. . . ." "The testimony from beginning to -end/'' continues 
Mr. Oliver, "does not disclose the fact of a single assault and bat- 
tery at or about the polls, on account of the side any one wished to 
vote or had voted, in the whole Territory on the day of election.""' 
He also asserts, and refers to sustaining evidence, that the legisla- 
ture and all other officers alleged to have been elected by the South- 
ern emigrants, WEKE LEGALLY CHOSEN. If these assertions 
be true, then the statements contained in the extracts I have pre- 
viously quoted from authors recognized to be standard, are incorrect. 

Dr. Eobinson admits that in the fir'st election the Northern men, 
who were the anti-slavery element, were in the minority. On page 
97, Kansas Conflict, he says, "At this time [election November 29, 
1854] every considerable settlement in the Territory, except Law- 
rence and vicinity, was pro-slavery. . . ." G-en. Whitfield was can- 
didate on the Southern ticket, and Messrs. Wakefield and Elenniken 
represented the Northern sentiment. There were 2,833 votes cast 
for all candidates. Of these Gen. Whitfield received 2,238, Flenni- 
ken 305, Wakefield 248, scattering 22. Robinson gives the figures 
somewhat more favorable to his side than do the committee;"' but 
hi's own figures show the Southern or pro-slavery candidate. Gen. 
Whitfield, legally, duly, and honestly elected. He says the illegal 
vote was estimated to be 1,729; take this from the General's re- 
ported vote, and he has 509 legal votes. This gave him an admitted 
majority of 204 over the next highest candidate, Flenniken, who re- 
ceived 305. It is an unquestioned rule of law that unless the fraud, 
or intimidation, in an election i's sufficient, had it not been used or 
resorted to, to have caused a different result, that then the election 
is not thereby vitiated. ". . . the fact that illegal votes were re- 
ceived will not affect the election, or render it void, unless the num- 
ber is great enough to affect the general result. 

"When, however, it is shown that illegal votes have been cast for 
a candidate, they should be deducted from his vote; and if, by so 
doing, the general result is changed, the opposite candidate should 
be declared elected.'"" And even where fraud is alleged and proved, 
unless the "fraud is of such a character that the correct vote can- 



'i^Mlnorlty Report, 75. 
"=See Majority Report, 8. 

'"6 Congressional Elec. Cases, 243 ; Amer. and Eng. Enc. of Law, Elections, 
352. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 157 

not be determined/'' it does not invalidate the election if any man 
received a majority of the legal votes legally cast.'" No claim was 
OT is made that the votes returned for Flenniken were not correct. 
Probably no popular election in the world was entirely free from 
some fraud or irregularity; and whatever there was in that on©, 
both by evidence of sworn witnesses and the admissions of their 
o^vn wi-iters, leaves it legal. Says Dr. Frank W. Blackmar, of the 
Kansas University: "There is little doubt, indeed, that Mr. Whit- 
field could have been elected had there been no' fraudulent votes 
cast, for at this time the majority of the citizens of the Territory 
were Proslavery.'"'* But — the law says that because the legal votes 
were in the majority — this election was legal and indisputably valid. 
Dr. Blackmar, it would seem from hi's language, makes the mistake 
of assuming that some illegal or fraudulent votes vitiates an elec- 
tion and renders it nugatory. This is not only a very grave error — 
and if he does not others do make it — ^but it is very unfair in its 
bearing upon the history of the relations between the North and 
the South. Nothing but unpardonable prejudice can keep erroneous 
statements concerning the Kansas elections current in history. No 
man was ever more rightfully entitled to his seat in Congress than 
was General Whitfield under the valid election of Kansas Territory 
October 29, 1854. Prof. Chas. E. Tuttle i^s perhaps the only his- 
torian who is thoroughly anti-Southern in his treatment of Kan- 
sas history, who has the fairness frankly to admit the legality, under 
the law, of this election. He says, "Further, it may be mentioned 
that when a congressional investigation was made into the facts, it 
appeared that all the violence and fraud resorted to were surplusage, 
as General Whitfield received a majority of the legal votes that were 
polled on the 29th of November, 1854.""' 

I have thus far been more than liberal in my treatment of this 
election. Even those who admit that Whitfield received a majority 
of the legal votes persist in speaking of "violence" and "intimi- 
dation" offered by Southerner's or Missourians. It is due to history 
to call attention to the fact that there is even less ground for alleg- 
ing the use of violence or intimidation than for the claim that there 



"'lb.,' 353. 

3WThe Life of Chas. Robinson (Topeka, 1902). 125. 

si'>A New Centennial History of the State of Kansas (Madison, Wis., and Law- 
rence, Kans., 1876), 144. 



158 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

were illegal votes. Thus far, in estimating the vote, I have granted 
that the illegality was perpetrated entirely by Missonrians, or other 
Southerners, which was by no means the case. That the reader may 
see this, since the original record cannot be seen by all, and that he 
may judge for himself how far the claims for violence and intimi- 
dation are justified, I present a synopsis of the evidence taken by 
the Congressional investigating committee. I eaideavor here to give 
the substance of what each witness stated as best reasonable space 
will allow. I give the leading evidence concerning seven districts ; 
tliis evidence I take to be fairly representative ol the whole. "The 
most shameless fraud was practiced" in the seventh district, says 
the majority report. Not an illegal vote is charged against the first, 
third, eighth, ninth, tenth, twelfth, thirteenth, or seventeenth dis- 
trict. 

Second District. — Four witnesses were examined. 

1. Does not say lie saw a single illegal vote, and saw but one man from 
Missouri. 

2. Saw one illegal voter, but does not say for whom lie voted; saw no 
violence or intimidation. 

3. This witness was an anti-islaveiy candidate; was in the election judges' 
room all day; saw "several" (no estimate) illegal voters, some of whom lie 
names, but does not say for whom they voted. 

4. Proves nothing for either side. 

Fourth District. — Seven witnesses examined. 

1. Saw some ]\Iissourians who said they had voted; does not say how 
many or for whom they voted, but says they were hollowing for both sides. 

2. More voters on the poll-books, in estimation of the witness, than legal 
resident voters in the district, but does not say or intimate who cast the 
surplus or for whom they were cast. 

3. Mentions some names on the books who, he says, were not residents, 
but says not a word about illegal votes for any particular side. 

4. Heard a Missourian say about one hundred and fifty Missourians had 
voted; heard one man say he had sent twenty of them to vote; witness 
speaks from hearsay only. 

5. Saw eight armed Missourians vote; does not say for whom. 

6. Witness was a stranger; saw many strangers drunk; did not pretend 
to estimate the vote or say for whom ca.st. Heard some Missourians say 
they had a right to vote. 

7. Heard Missourians say they had been to the Territory and had voted. 
Fifth District. — One witness. 

1. Saw men who had lived in Missouri vote; mentions only one who he 
says yet resided thei-e; saw others of them who had claims in the Territory 
and who insisted on the right to vote. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 159 

Sixth District. — One witness. 

1. One hundred Missourians told witness they had voted; did not say 
they said for whom; saw "several Eastern Northern free State abolition 
emigraxits who intended to vote and then leave for home." (Evidence, p. 
11.) 

Seventh District. — Read notes at end of volume. 

1. Several pro- and anti-slavery settlers had left their claims; saw some 
illegal votes from Missouri; no estimate. 

Eleventh District — No evidence taken. 

Fourteenth District. — Seven witnesses. 

1. Witness was an election judge appointed by Governor Reeder; he says 
one of his associate judges was a Missourian, but that there was "a hand- 
some majority" cast by legal voters for the Southern candidate. (Evidence, 
p. 15.) 

2. Not one word about illegal voteis or other election wrongs. 

3. Saw seven Missourians' names on the poll-book; does not say for 
whom they voted. 

4. Heard the same seven say they had voted. 

5. Saw Missourians at election who said they voted; no estimate. 

6. Witness was Mr. Scxjtt, who they claimed was the illegal judge be- 
cause be lived in Missouri. He says he had a land claim in the Territoiy; 
that he took the required oath "and faithfully and impartially discharged 
his duties." (Evidence, p. 930.) He says those ]\lissourians who voted felt 
it was thus necessary to counteract votes sent out by the Emigrant Aid 
Societies, many of whom openly alleged they came merely to vote, not to 
become residents. (lb., 932.) No where is Mr. Scott's evidence questioned 
or sought to be impeached. 

7. Witness was an acting justice of the peace; says not a word about 
illegality ; says that he advised the crowd that under the Governor's procla- 
mation each man had a right to decide for himself whether he should vote. 

Fifteenth District. — Eight witnesses. 

1. Witness was an anti-slaver}% free State man; "I saw but two Mis- 
sourians there [voting place] that I know by name, but did not see them 
vote." 

2. Voted for Flenniken, who was a non-resident; saw but two Mis- 
sourians vote, but says he "thinks" two hundred non-residents voted. 

3. Saw two or three Missourians vote; mentions about a dozen names, 
presumably those on the poll-books, and says, "So far as I know they do 
not live in Kansas." Says these claimed they had as good a right to vote 
as those voters sent out by the Emigrant Aid Societies. (Evidence, p. 20.) 

4. Tells nothing. 

5. Tells nothing. 

6. Did not vote or see any one vote. Valuable witness ! 

7. Says election was "orderly and quiet," but witness judges thei-e are 
about one hundred and six nam^es on poll-books not residents. (P. 1132.) 



160 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

8. One of Governor Reeder's constables; saw ten illegal pro-slavery votes 
and one illegal Northern or free State vote. Says Flenniken's [the non- 
resident abolition candidate] nephew was on the ground electioneering, and 
was "drunk and overbearing." [Connelley, whom I quoted above, must 
have gotten some of his o-\vn "whiskey-sodden" men mixed with the Mis- 
sourians.] "Both sides voted as peaceably and quietly as I ever saw at any 
election." "Tlie Missourians did not interfere by word or act." (P. 376.) 

Sixteenth District. — Eight witnesses. 

1. "I had a list of voters at that election. The pro-slavery party had a 
majority in this district ... as I was well acquainted with the voters and 
made out a list with others who knew men that I did not know; and this 
[majority] was the result after giving all the doubtful votes to the free 
State party." (P. 31.) Pro-slavery or Southern men tried to keep the 
polls open so everybody could get in. (P. 30.) 

2. This witness stated positively that in this district the Southern men 
had a majority; says there was no trouble; says Flenniken, the Northern 
candidate who secured the second highest number of votes, was a non- 
resident. (P. 26.) 

3. Saw some Missourians who said they voted because non-resident 
Northern men had done so; no estimate of the number. He says of voters 
he knew in the district "General Whitfield received a majority." (P. 30.) 

4. Saw much crowding near the voting place, but one side was kept out 
as much as the other. "I saw no votes given in that day that I knew to be 
illegal." (P. 24.) 

5. "I went to the election with six or seven friends of Flenniken, who 
all had pistols and bowie-knives." No one was prevented from voting. (P. 
38.) [Gracious! from reading the histories one would think that only 
Missourians, or men who AV'ere voting for Southern candidates, carried such 
ornaments ! ] 

6. Says two hundred Missourians voted that day; free State men had 
difficulty to get to the polls. (P. 37.) 

7. "No quarreling, but a good deal of crowding." (P. 24.) "General 
rumor was that Flenniken was from the East and did not" reside in Kan- 
sas. Witness says he voted for Wakefield [a very outspoken and avowed 
abolition candidate], and says he "was not frightened at all." (P. 25.) 

8. "As quiet an election as I ever saw." Both sides had pistols and arms, 
but no more than were common at that day on the frontiers. No violence 
offered any one; saw no illegal votes. (P. 32.) Southern party had a 
large majority in that district. 

Such is the evidence concerning this first Kansas election. What 
are we to conclude ? This evidence was taken when the entire affair 
Avas fresh in the mindfe of participants. Its vagueness and uncer- 
tainty cannot fail to strike even the more prejudiced. To give the 
evidence the benefit of everj^ suspicion of doubt, the best we can 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 161 

say is that it tends to prove illegal votes something as follows 
against the Southern side : 

Second district 13 

Fourth district 150 

Fifth district 100 

Sixth district 5 

Fourteenth district 7 

Fifteenth district 10 

Sixteenth district 200 

Total 481: 

Eead the evidence carefully, a.nd these figures will be seen to be 
strongly liberal. That number of illegal votes is by no means 
proven. But where there is an intimation, however unreliable it 
may be, that there are anything like so many illegal votes I grant 
them in the above figures, and at the same time I grant that all of 
them were cast for the Southern side. But in fact, I repeat, such 
was not the case. The smallest boy who might chance to read this 
would readily understand that if there had been real proof of il- 
legality, violence, or intimidation, or even anything tending to show 
greater illegality, this committee would have found it. That was 
its business. It had gone out to prove the illegality of this election, 
as well as that of others. The best, most reliable, most trustworthy 
evidence was undo'ubtedly adduced. Justification for acts which 
followed this election depended upon proving its illegality. The 
Congressional committee, Dr. Eobinson, Eli Thayer, a moving spirit 
in the emigrant aid movement, and one of the stiongest Northern 
partisans of that day, and everybody else, admit legality in the pre- 
cincts not here examined. It was certified that Goneral Whitfield 
had received 2,238 votes (supra) ; deduct the 484, and we have 
1,754. The total combined votes for all the Northern, abolition, or 
anti-slavery ~ candidates, were 575. Deduct this from the legal 
Southern vote, and it leaves 1,179 clear majority for Southern 
views ; or, the General's plurality over Flenniken, the next highest 
candidate, was 874. Where do the other one thousand seven hun- 
dred and twenty-nine vott^ which Eobinson, following the majority 
of the Congressional committee, and others say were "estimated" 
11 



162 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

as illegal get their illegality? IT DOES ^"OT AEISE PKOM 
THE EVIDENCE; NO CREDIBLE HISTORIAN CAN JUS- 
TIFY A CLAIM OF FRAUD OR INTIMIDATION WHICH 
EFFECTED THE LEGALITY OF THIS ELECTION. 

Very much more depends, in summing up the positions occupied 
by the North and the South, upon leaving the impression that "bor- 
der ruffianism" tlirust Southern illegality upon inoffensive Northern 
settlers in Kansas, than one is liable to think on a superficial glance. 
The justification for secession finds some of its strongest arguments 
from the movements of the North shortly before and for years after 
the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Those historians vi^ho have 
determined to hold over the South an undeserved odium have not 
been slow to appreciate this fact. This is one reason why it is that, 
in the face of the truth, some of tliose who write school text-bocks 
have been by no means alone in misstating or garbling Kansas his- 
tory. For instance, so prominent a historian as James Schouler, 
concerning the result of this first Kansas election, has said, "Whit- 
field, a Tennesseean, who held the office of Indian agent, was chosen 
by fraudulent ballots.'"^" This language is susceptible of no other 
fair construction than that if it had not been, for the fraudulent 
votes, General Whitfield would not have been elected. Mr. Rhodes 
admits the election of Whitfield, but followte the plan inaugurated 
by Sherman and Howard in their report to Congress, and tries to 
leave the impression that this election was not due to a Southern 
majority, but to the fact that Northerners took so little interest they 
failed to vote !''" But E. Benjamin Andrews admits that the North- 
ern voters at this election of November 29, 1854, were in a "real mi- 
nority."^^ 

The action of Governor Reeder in delaying the election of tlie 
Territorial legislature was not fully seen until future events made it 
patent. That he was party to a cunningly devised scheme to cap- 
ture for the North the Kansas Territory, the fact that the legisla- 
tive election, was not called at the time that that for a Congressional 
representative was, together with his after life, fully show. In the 
first place, he delayed unnecessarily the organization of the Terri- 



'2«History U. S., (Dodd. Mead & Co., 1S91), Vol. V., 327. 
'"Rhodes. History U. S., Vol. II., 80. 
^"History U. S. (1895), Vol. III., 22-3. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 1<33 



tory. He was commissioned June 29, 1854, just twenty-nine 
after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. He did not go to 
the Territory until November. In his special message to Congress, 
January 24, 1856, the President called attention to this delay, and 
showed its tardiness by comparing it with Nebraska, created by the 
same bill, which was organized and at work before Kansas was at- 
tempted. The delay was to allow Northern emigrants, sent out by 
the aid societies, to reach the Territory. The failure to order for an 
earlier day the election of a legislature had this same object, and he 
also saw that if the legislature had been elected November 29, 1854, 
its legality would have gone at once and immediately before Con- 
gress in determining the election of the Congi-essional representa- 
tive. To all of which the President called the attention of Con- 
gress.''' But the strength of this party, the free^State abolition 
party, the party destined to nominate and elect Lincoln, was not yet 
sufficient in Congress to justify relying upon it too strongly; so the 
election for Territorial legislators was delayed until the following 
]\'[arch, nearly one year after the act of Congress organizing the 
Territory. Gigantic schemes, the product of brain 'stimulated by 
unholy ambitions, — -of minds afire from misguided consciences, — 
were being planned; caution marked the craftiness of the pro- 
jectors. 



323Congressional Globe. 34 Cong., 1 sess., 291 



IX. 

THE KANSAS LEGISLATURE AND OVERT 
NORTHERN REBELLION. 

The Kansas Territorial election of March 30, 1855, and its at- 
tendant and consequent resultfe, were the most significant local 
events in the ante-bellum struggle between the ISTorth and the South. 
The reception given its results pro^ves that the agitation of slavery 
was carried on by those who hoped thus to secure political pre- 
dominance for Northern Congressional power. Had the North 
continued to hold an equal or greater sway in national politics, few 
would have been the political agitators for "a, free State" in the 
United States; and the stormy and treacherous period in Kansas 
history would never have marred a page. 

At the time of this election. Governor Eeeder, a Pennsylvanian, 
was yet in the gubernatorial chair. He prescribed, pursuant to the 
act organizing the Territory, some rules for the conduct of this 
election more strict than those for the first election. He announced 
somewhat more plainly the requirements to be met to entitle one to 
vote. The most important was a requirement of bona fide citizen- 
sliip in the Territory with actual intent to continue permanently. 
Owing to the neA\Tiess of the country-, no time limit had been im- 
posed other than this. He added one election district, making 
eighteen. There were two classes of those who would compose the 
legislative body. As is well known, every State legislative body, 
like Congress, is composed of two branches, upper (in Congress this 
is the Senate) and lower (in Congress the House of Representa- 
tives) ; in the State Ave commonly call these bodies State Senate and 
State House of Eepre«entatives ; or, the two considered as one : tJie 
legislature. In this first Kansas election for Territorial legislature, 
the Senators were called Conncilmen, as they were in the previous 
new Territories, and the other body was called by the common 
name of Representatives. There were also other divisionte of the 
Territory; there were fourteen districts, which were nearly the 
same as the voting districts, called representative districts; and 
there were ten larger districts called Council (or Senate) districts. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 165 

The election was held, the returns made by the proper officers, and 
properly returned to the governor. The Southern ticket, commonly 
called the pro-slavery ticket, in a large majority and. with slight 
exception, was declared elected. Governor Eeeder and his asso- 
ciates examined the election returns and issued certificates of elec- 
tion to all except a few of the pro-slavery candidates; ''and thus 
complete legality w^as given to the first Legislative Assembly of the 
Territory," as the President of the United States pointed out in a 
special message to Congress.''' These meoi who held certificates of 
electio'n Governor Eeeder officially convened, "and communicated 
with them officially after they were organized and recognized them 
as a legally and properly constituted law-making body." Their 
first sessions were held at Pa^vnee, beginning July 2, 1855; from 
Pawnee they removed to Ijecompton, where they passed laws and 
adopted a constitution upon which the Territory afterward asked 
for admission as a State in tlie Federal Union. Hence, it is gen- 
erally called the Lecompton constitution. Shortly after the con- 
vening of the legislative body, in August, 1855, Governor Eeeder 
was removed from office by the President. 

In armed, organized, open, notorious rebellion against this offi- 
cially con'stituted and legally recognized body, the free-State or 
abolition people met at Topeka (September 19th and October 4, 
1855), and adopted a constitution, organized a government, pur- 
suant to which this Northern party alone elected a body they called 
a legislature, and pledged each other their lives and honor to stand 
by this action and to resist to death what they termed the ''bogus 
legislature." Hence, the legality of the body commonly called the 
pro-slavery or authorized legislature, which had been convened by 
Governor Eeeder in Pawnee and which removed to Lecompton, be- 
comes a matter of national importance; because, if legal, then those 
who, in numbers and openly, resisted the laws of that body and did 
violence to its personnel, were in rebellion ; and all who aided or en- 
couraged in any way, such as by furnishing arms, money, or moral 
support, were particeps criminis — equally and if possible more 
guilty than the actors themselves. 

Hence, in our inquiry into the regularity and legality of the offi- 
cially recognized and first Kansas legislature, we shall proceed with 
our examination of the witness we have already had on the stand, 

""Congressional Globe, 1 sess., 34 Cong., 297. 



166 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

tlie one introduced to us by Eobinson, Eliodes, and other Northern 
writers — the evidence filed by the investigating committee sent out 
by Congress. This and various other Government documents really 
are the most reliable sources of information extant. 

Unfortunately, it will not be improper to repeat, the claims of 
Hons. Howard and Sherman, who made what we call the majority 
report, are not always borne out by the evidence; and, so, many of 
their statements are extremely unreliable. I have already called at- 
tention to the fact that many thousands of this report, unaccom- 
panied by either the minority report or the evidence, were scattered 
throughout the North ; and I am inclined to believe that this ex parte 
distribution of the document did no little harm. Of course, such 
writers as Dr. Eobinson, Eli Thayer, Dr. Edward Everett HJale 
(whose recent advanced birthday marks many years of much use- 
fulness), and the others of their co-laborers who were prominent 
actors in the great drama under investigation, have no interest in 
telling the whole story, but do have reasons for letting the asser- 
tions of the majority report stand as original and accurate sources 
of history. Notice, too, how some of the statements of Messrs. Sher- 
man and Howard read like some histories. Undoubtedl}^, in their 
report we find the source of the usual inaccuracy of statement and 
conclusion touching the Northern attitude as manifested through 
her work in Kansas. Among other things said concerning the elec- 
tion in question, they say that companies of men from Missouri 
"were arranged in regular parties, and sent into every council dis- 
trict in the Territory^ and into every representative district hut 
one. The numbers were so distributed as to control the elec- 
tion in each district."'" But other admissions tend to im- 
peach their own statements. In discussing the t«nth election 
district they say, "This and the eighth district formed one 
representative district, and was the only one in which the in- 
vasion from Missouri did not extend." And in discussing the 
twelfth district they say, "The election in this district was con- 
ducted fairly; no complaint was made that illegal votes were 
cast.'"'" Under the head "seventeenth district," page 29, they say, 
"The election in this district seems to have been fairly conducted, 
and [is] not contested at all. In this district the pro-slavery party 



325Majority Report, 9 : Rep. Corns., 36 Cong., 2 sess., Vol. III., p. 4. 
32'Ib., 23. 



XORTHERX KEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 167 

had the majority/"'' Neither the evidence gathered by this inves- 
tigating committee, nor any reliable historical source, bears out the 
charges of fraud, intimidation, and illegality brought against Mis- 
sourians or the Southern people. The depositions of the hundreds 
of witnesses upon the validity of this and other elections make in- 
teresting reading, but even an abridgment would carry us much 
beyond the limits of this discussion. But enough can be shown to 
see the legality, lawfulness, and fairness of the election of the Le- 
compton legislature, which was commissioned, convened, and recog- 
nized by the then rightful Territorial governor. As in the first 
election, so in this, — there was fraudulent voting; but as in the 
first election, so in this, — abolitionists took the initiative, and 
Southern men felt self-defense justified their action. However, we 
do not stop here to apologize for the action of the Southerners ; the 
unimpeachable fact still remains that the illegal votes cast did not 
change the result; the Lecompton legislature was chosen by lona 
fide legal voters; and perhaps it is not too much to say that not 
a man was intimidated or prevented from voting in the entire Ter- 
ritory in connection with this election. 

Mr. Oliver, author of the minority report, presents "compiled 
tahles, comparing the votes cast for the Free-State ticket in the sev- 
eral council districts and representative districts in the Territory. 
This is taken from tables exhibited by the majority. It is part of 
their own showing. In it will be seen the number of votes cast in 
each district for the Free-State tickets, compared with the number 
of votes at the time the census was talcen in each respectively ; and 
from this it will appear that the Free-State votes fell far short of 
being sufficient to elect a majority in either branch of the legisla- 
ture, even if there had been no increase of [Southern] votes by bona 
fide settlers, between the time the census was taken and the elec- 
tion. [It will be remembered that no one then or since ever claimed 
more Free-State votes than were reported. The charge was that 
more Southerners than were entitled to vote had voted.] 

"But the current testimony of a number of witnesses establishes 
the fact conclusively . . . that the emigration of hona fide settlers 
from the Southern States was greater in the month of March after 
the census was taken than in any equal time previous.'"'* 

^"Minority Report, 73. 
32SMinnrity Report, 74. 



168 



NOETHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 



It will be remembered that a majority of this committee admit, 
and so do Dr. Eobinson and by far the greater number of all 
writers, that at the first election the Southern people were in the 
majority. After this first election Governor Reeder took a census, 
and claimed to have reported the number of legal votes in each dis- 
trict. If we grant that each vote returned for the free-States can- 
didate was legal, the table above mentioned establi'shes clearly that 
the majority of the votes shown to be bona, fide by this census, taken 
as it was by Northern sympathizers, was cast for the Southern men, 
who were afterward convened in the Lecompton legislature. Here 
is the table : 



li 




IK 


1^ 

Is 


a 




1^ 


a 












"So*- 




"o 


IS 


1^^ 


sgs 


-SI 


5S 


gf^^ 


II 


a a 


d o 


B>S 


SaS 


S.22 




Si;.^ 


°S 


^bDX 


3^^ 


flP 


sSh 


3o 


r^ 


;?; 


tz 


!zs 


^ 




« 


^ 


1 


97 


19 


1 


1 


4G6 


255 


2 


2 


369 


253 


3 


2 


212 


12 


1 


3 


212 


12 


2 


3 


193 


44 


1 


4 


101 


4 


1 


4 


442 


156 


2 


5 


92 


49 


1 


5 


253 




1 


6 


253 


35 


2 


G 


201 


140 


1 


7 


242 


152 


4 


7 


247 




1 


8 


99 


120 


1 


8 


215 


60 


1 


9 


102 


20 


1 





208 




1 


10 


83 




1 


10 


468 


66 


2 


11 


47 


54 


2 










12 


215 




2 










13 


203 




2 










14 


335 


59 


3 











"This shows that the aggregate of the votes cast in the Territory 
for the Free-State ticket fell short of 800, while the census shows 
tliat there were 2,905 legal votes in the Territo-ry in the February 
previous. The Free-State ticket, tJierefore, did not receive one-third 
of the legal votes of the Territory, even if all be excluded from the 
account who emigrated to the Territory after the census was taken. 

"This fact was apparent to the majority of the committee. But 
they attempted to break its force in two ways: by comparing the 
names on the poll-books with those of the census returns, from 
which comparison they argue that only a fraction over 1,300 of the 
legal voters upon the census returns voted at that election. And, 



NORTHERX EEBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 169 

second, they argiie that the abolitionists were prevented from voting 
by violence, threats, and intimidation. 

"On the first point, it is unnecessary to say more than that no 
comparison between the |X)lI-books and the census return was made 
except by districts. Between the time of taking the census and the 
election, settlers had changed their residence from one part of the 
Territory to another, and doubtless [which can now be shown to 
be exactly correct] voted in a different place from that in which 
they were registered when the census was taken. [As they legally 
had a right to do, an.d which, in fact, they did do.] The committee 
did not compare the names on the poll-books with the names on the 
census returns throughout the Territory, and the comparison al- 
luded to by the majorit}', therefore, by no means proves what they 
claim for it. 

"On the second point . . . there is no evidence that any violence 
wa)6 resorted to, or force [or intimidation] employed by which men 
were prevented from voting at a single election precinct in the Ter- 
ritory, or that there was any greater disturbance at any election pre- 
cinct than frequently occurs in all our State elections in exciting 
times.""' 

One reason why the free-State vote was not larger in this elec- 
tion was shown to he because many free-State men voted the 
Southern ticket. For instance, on page 160 of the evidence, 
a prominent and honorable witness says, "I know a great many 
Free-State men who voted that day the Pro-Slavery Southern 
ticket. ... I saw them vote myself." This is not hearsay; 
it is positive; and mo'st of all, it is significant. In the first 
election the Southern men were and are admitted to have been in 
the majority and to have elected their ticket; and at this election 
they draw strength from the enemy. 

After his removal from office in August, 1855, Governor Eeeder 
began to consort wath the abolitionists who were holding conven- 
tions, and organizing an opposition government which passed pseudo 
laws, and attempted to crush the legal government by force. He 
then publicly denounced the very legislature which he had so re- 
cently acknowledged. The now ex-governor, and Doctor C. "Robin- 
son, and others, decided that they could succeed, since the failure 
of their fraudulent efforts at the polls, as we shall see later, only 



323Minority Report. 74-75. 



170 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

by forming a free-State constitution, and securing tlie aid of the 
North to enforce and carry out to the "bloody issue" their posi- 
tion/'" The ex-governor consented, or most likely sought, to be- 
come a candidate for Congress under the usurping abolitionists. 
At the election which they illegally held, and in which abolitionists 
or Northern free-State people only participated, he was said to have 
been elected. 

On August 1, 1856, eighty-eight of the Eepublicans in Congress, 
who were either conniving at or abetting the Kansas illegalities, 
"voted for the admission of Andrew H. Eeeder as a delegate from 
Kansas, although he had received at the election authorized by law 
not a solitary vote.'"" A letter written by Eeeder, found on the 
streets of a Kansas toAvn, and which neither he, the party to whom 
it was written, nor any one else, ever attempted to disprove, is an 
open confession meant to be private that this opposition to the Le- 
compton Territorial government, was sedition. Even the ring- 
leaders in this rebellion never sincerely questioned the validity of 
the Lecompton legislature. In the letter in question Eeeder said, 
"As to putting a set of laws in operation in opposition to the Ter- 
ritorial government, my opinion is confirmed instead of being 
shaken; . . . We will be, so far as legality is concerned, in the 
wrong; and that is no trifle in so critical a state of things, and in 
view of such bloody consequences. . . . They [the United States 
authorities] say they cannot sustain us in the position of resisting 
the Territorial government ; and you will find, I thinlv, that Douglas 
will also take that ground. But I want you to understand, most 
distinctly, that I do not talk thus to the public, or to our enemies. 
I may speak my plain and private opinions in letters to our friends 
in Kansas, for it is my duty; but to the public, as you will see by 
my published letter, I show no divided f ront."^^^ 

The reasoning of the majority of the Congressional investigat- 
ing committee in order to find fraudulent votes from the election 
returns as compared with the census, is most interesting and without 
a parallel in sophistry. It shows the desperation of the case for 
these rehels when it is seen how they hugged to the census taken in 
January and February, fix)m one to nearly two months prior to the 

^3"See deposition, Evidence, 87. 

*"Repts. of Commits., 1 sess., 36 Cong., Vol. II., No. 255, p. 44 ; Journal Ho. 
Rep., August, 1856. 
M2Evidence, 1134. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 171 

election. Since' their contention was not borne out by the proof, 
something must be found, and sO' they deduct from the number of 
votes returned by the election officers, the number of votes which 
the census enumerator said were in each district, and insist that 
the difference are the illegal votes, which they claim were cast by 
Missouri ruffians. There might have been some shadow of rea'son 
in this for a country whose voting population was not changing as 
was that oi Kansas. When we remember that both the evidence 
taken by the Congressional committee and all early and late histo- 
rians admit that at the first election the Southern people were in 
the majority, and then remember that a large immigration got to 
the Territory in time toi become hona fide settlers and legal voters, 
we at once see that the claim for this large illegal vote is entirely 
untenable. More tlian this; Wm. Phillips, at the time located in 
Kansas as the correspondent of the ISTew York Tnhune (he and his 
paper both strong abolitionists), in his book published in 1856, 
speaking of this same election, says, "By the 30th of March many 
spring emigrants could, and did, get into the territory, while but 
very little of the Eastern [abolition] emigration got to the territory 
until late in the season.'"'" Speaking of the same census Mr. Phil- 
lips also says, "There were only 2,905 votes in the territory when 
the census was taken, but as the election occurred on the 30th of 
March, the population had considerably increased.'"'' Phillips con- 
tinued to remain a citizen of Kansas, and, many years after he wrote 
this, was elected one of the Kansas representatives to Congress; 
Noble L. Prentiss says he was the "best known member of the Tri- 
iune staff.'"'' 

Eev. Eichard Cordley, writing, after years spent among the peo- 
ple of Kansas, from both personal knowledge and information, in 
1895, says, "This number [2,905, as reported by the census] was 
probably increased by March 30th, as immigration began very early, 
and quite a number of actual settlers came into the country before 
the election.'"" 

In the evidence gathered by the investigating committee we find 
some valuable light which shows that a large number of former ]\Iis- 
sourians had moved early into the Territorj^, but were away from 

333Conquest of Kansas, 70. 

ssqb., 69. 

^^^Kan. Miscellanies, 95. 

338A History of Lawrence, Kans., 28. 



172 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

their new homes when the census enumerators were at work. This 
accounts for the names of many former Missourians on the poll- 
books whose names did not appear in the census returns, and who 
were bona fide residents of the Territory and legal voters. Under 
his oath an ex-justice of the peace under Eeeder, and who came to 
Kansas from Minnesota, says, "The people were also dissatisfied in 
regard to the time when the census was taken, which was in mid- 
winter, when many of the actual residents were in Missouri, to pass 
the cold weather and settle up their business, intending to return 
into the Territory in the spring; and those persons were not 
enumerated in the census that was taken, because the census takers 
said the governor had ordered them to take tlie names of none but 
those then in the Territory.""' 

And more yet: The election officers who received and certified 
the votes, in both these early and Northern challenged elections, 
were largely composed of abolition or free-State men. Especially 
was this true in the second election ]\Iarch 30th, at which the legis- 
lature, which was repudiated by the Nortli, was elected. In this 
election two of the three election officers at each voting place were 
free-State men. This accounts for the large illegal Emigrant Aid 
vote cast by men just from the N'orth ; and it leaves no doubt as to 
the absence of fraud by the Southern party in conducting the elec- 
tion, and gave to the JSTorthern party every reasonable opportunity 
to prove intimidation at or about the polls. Certificates of election 
to all the members of the authorized or Lecompton legislature, ex- 
cept the few whose election Governor Reeder set aside, were issued 
upon the authority of and by virtue of the returns of men about 
three-fourths of whom were opposed to the Southern party. In his 
deposition before the Congressional committee. Governor Eeeder 
says that he took especial care to see that at such places as he an- 
ticipated illegal Missouri votes, two of tlie three election officers 
should be of the Northern or anti-slavery party ; and that about one- 
third only of the officers throughout the Territorj^ on that day were 
pro-slavery men.''' 

Concerning this election of March 30th, some very distinguished 
Northern writers have given us some very strange things. Not the 
least of the strange statements is found from the pen of Edward 



^"Evidence. 526. 

s^'See his statement In Evidence, 935. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 173 

Channing, Ph. D., assistant professor of history in the Harvard 
University. He ha's this to say : "At all events, the majority of the 
bona fide settlers were favorable to freedom. To counteract their 
votes, hundreds of Missourians crossed the border into Kansas to 
vote. The upshot of the whole matter was that the free-state voters 
refused to vote. The territorial legislature thus fell into the hands 
of the pro-slavery men" ; which result, he further says, "was brought 
about by frau4 and intimidation.'""' Notice his language: "The 
majority of the bona fide settlers." This leave's the impression that 
such majority existed first, last, and at every election ; if this is what 
he means to say, it is a very unjust and inaccurate statement. But 
it is not the strangest thing he seems to say. "The free-state voters 
refused to vote" — "the legislature thus fell into the hands of the 
pro-slavery men." Does Doctor Channing mean to say that the 
free-State voters, owing to Southern fraud and intimidation, re- 
fused to vote in the Territorial legislative election ? I submit that 
his words are susceptible of no other reasonable construction. The 
inaccuracy — be it a result of want of knowledge of the facts or a 
result of hasty research or what it may — is so unjust to a correct es- 
timation of the history of that period — so misleading at least in its 
manner of statement — that it is no wonder that the South points a 
finger of interrogation at the way some writers have mangled her 
history. 

E. Benj. Andrews thus arraigns the Missourians for their con- 
duct in this election : 

"The vote against them [Northern settlers] on the last occasion, 
however, was largely deposited by Missourians who came across the 
border on election day, voted, and returned. This was demonstrated 
by the fact that there were but 2,905 legal votefe in the Territory at 
the time, while 5,427 votes were cast for the pro-slavery candidates 
alone."''" This shows inaccuracy, to say the least of it; because 
(1) he ignores the fact that the 2,905 votes were those which the 
census had found, or claimed to have foimd, and that thife census 
was taken, over part of the Territory at least, thirty to fifty days 
prior to the election; and that from that time up to the election 
numerous bona fide settlers arrived, and as I have elsewhere men- 
tioned, that there was e^ddence to show that this immigration was 



3«The United States of America (Macmillans, 1S96), 248. 
3«»riistory U. S. (189.5). Vol. III., 223. 



174 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECEvSSION, 

largely SoiitherD. Hence, to say "2,905 legal voters at the time," is 
incorrect; (2) he takes the "estimate" of illegal votes as estir- 
mated — not proven, mind you — by the majority of the Congres- 
sional investigating committee, and the value of this majority re- 
port I hope will be correctly determined by the time I sliall have 
done with it. ]\Ir. Schouler has fallen into a similar error/" 

There is no ground for the claim sometimes made that Governor 
Eeeder issued certificates of election to the pro-slavery men who 
claimed the election of March 30th because he feared to refuse; 
because he did carefully examine the returns and all facts connected 
therewith. In doing this he thought he detected fraud in some of 
the districts, and accordingly set aside the elections in those dis- 
trici)s, and order that the vacancies be filled by another election 
which he appointed to be held May 22, 1855. Mr. Schouler men- 
tio'ns this fact, and then says, "At supplementary elections, held 
on the 22d of May, the free-State men easily filled the vacancies 
by men of their own choice. But the territorial legislature still 
stood pro-slavery by more than two to one.""^ To say that I am as- 
tonished at this statement does not describe my surprise. Such his- 
tories from so high authority go out into the world potent factors 
in forming public opinion. Naturally the inference is that if so 
soon after March 30th Korthem men carried important districts 
then, under similar circumstances, they sho^uld have done so at the 
previous election, and hence were a bona fide majority. As a whole, 
this supplementary election can be taken as indicating nothing 
whatever as to the relg-tive strength of the two parties. This is 
undoubtedly true because Southerners refused to vote except in the 
sixteenth district, at Leavenworth. This action was based upon 
their claim that GovemoT Eeeder had in some way exceeded his au- 
thority in setting aside the former election. Whether they were 
right or wrong in this contention has nothing to do with the results 
of the voting. We have the majority report as evidence for the 
fact that except in the Leavenworth district not one pro-slavery 
vote was cast (p. 36) in this supplementary election. No one ever 
even thinks of claiming this lack of pro-slavery votes was for want 
of actual bona fide pro-slavery residents, because they were actually 



^"History U. S., VoL V., 328. 

'"History U. S. (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1891), Vol. V., 329. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 175 

in numbers in each district and entitled to vote at each respective 
voting place, as the evidence clearly discloses. 

Concerning the Leavenworth district Howard and Sherman in 
the majority report say, "It is impossible for yonr committee ac- 
curately to decide which party would have had a majority of the 
legal votes of this district, had no illegal votes been polled, on ac- 
count of the difficulty of determining who were legal and who il- 
legal voters at that election." Most astonishing language', this — 
the more so when we read the evidence. They — this very commit- 
tee — examined as to this Leavenworth district nine witnesses. As 
nearly as can be, I give respectively the words ol each as to its le- 
gality, fraud and by whom practiced, and as to which candidate 
had "a majority of the legal votes of this district." Taken in the 
order in which they are found in the table of contents : 

1. Same candidates elected as on ]\Iarch the 30th; "I never heard a 
charge that the election of 22d of May was carried by illegal votes. They 
gave it up, considering that they were in the minority in this district, that 
the pro-slavery party was the strongest. I did not see many Missourians 
here on the 22d of May." A few Missourians voted ; and about thirty non- 
resident boat hands voted the free- State ticket — witness could be positive 
because the two tickets were on different colored paper; as to illegal votes 
"it was a fair stand ofif." (Evidence, p. 52.) 2. "Tliere was no crowd of 
strangers here on that day, and the election passed off quietly. I do not 
recollect of hearing an angry word that day." "I think the number of 
legal votes was larger on the 22d of May in this district than at the pre- 
vious March election; and my opinion is that the majority of the pro- 
slavery party had increased." (lb., 525.) 3. "I suppose there were about 
715 votes polled at this election. [The exact number, see poll-book, Ma- 
jority Report, p. 36.] I believe they were nearly, if not all, legal voters. 
... 1 saw probably six or seven Missourians on tlie ground. ... I believe 
that the poll-book shows about the strength ol the parties." [The poll- 
books show 560 for the pro-slavery ticket, 140 for the free-State, 15 "scat- 
tering." {Majority Report, p. 36.)]. Some free-State men refused to vote; 
some non-resident votes taken, cannot say how many; witness was a free- 
State man and one of the election judges, says he was willing for all who 
voted to do so because he thought it lawful and right. "I do not know of 
any free-State men being deterred from voting that day on account of his 
political views, and if they had wanted to vote they had an opportunity to, 
so far as I know." (Evidence, p. 529.) 5. "l"Tiere were a great many per- 
sons that voted that day that 1 believe were non-residents of the Territory. 
...free-State men did not all vote. . .pro-slavery men all voted, or gen- 
erally so. ... 1 saw nothing to deter me from doing my duty as judge of 
the elections." (Evidence, pp. 524-25.) 6. Witness was a free-State man, 
and voted that ticket; heard two men whom he took to be from Missouri 



176 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

say they voted; election quiet; no crowd. "I think there was a free-soil 
majority on the 22d of May heire; but that is my notion only. ... I do not 
pretend to say that such was the case." (lb., 1140-1-2.) 7. Great many 
Missourians in town, but witness saw none of them vote; heard some say 
they brovight over parties to vote. "I noticed no disturbance or effort to 
control the vote of any one. I was not at the polls at all. I know but 
little of what was going on." (lb., 527-8). 8. From the poll-books wit- 
ness identifies 32 names who, he says, resided in Missouri at time of this 
election. Witness was a Missourian who voted and returned to Missouri; 
"election quietly conducted." (lb., 563-4.) 9. Identifies 21 names on the 
poll-books who, he says, lived in Missouri at time of election, all but eight 
or ten being those pointed out by former witness; many lived in Kansas 
at time witness gave his deposition. May 30th; many Missourians who 
voted had claims and afterward moved their families on them. (lb., 530.) 

Any fair man must admit that this evidence — a correct epitome 
of which I have given — shows not only by its greater weight, but 
almost without a contradiction, that there were twenty to thirty 
illegal free-State votes, and from twenty-five to thirty-five il- 
legal Southern votes; it shows that the witness Adams was cor- 
rect when he said that "it was about a fair stand-off." Taking the 
evidence in all its bearings, give it tlie benefit of all uncertainty, 
and we must admit that the pro-slavery candidate in the Leaven- 
worth district had a legal majority of at least over three hundred 
ho7ia fide legal Southern votes. This is the evidence which Howard 
and Sherman had before them — the only thing by which legally 
they could have been guided — their conclusion is a fair sample of 
their treatment of evidence. The application of the facts to Mr. 
Schouler's statements concerning this supplementary election is 
easy. If he had anything before him to invalidate this proof, it 
does not appear in the present light of history. 

Those who were upon Kansas soil were by no means all who par- 
ticipated in her affairs. Her history from 1854 to 1859 is no more 
local than is that of the Civil War. Sedition and rebellion in 
Kansas found their source and strength in the North. Her early 
elections with all their ugly blemishes found the cause of these de- 
fects in the aggressions O'f such organizations as emigrant aid so- 
cieties, the prime object of which was to create a free State for 
white men only, and in the fuel which the old-time abolitionists, 
led by Philips and Garrison, continually fed the public mind. The 
free-State abolitionists wanted to destroy slavery that they might 
occupy its room; the Garrison abolitionists struck at slavery 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 177 

through a blind and perverted philanthropy which they carried so 
far that they became the most bitter and pronounced disunionists 
the country ever produced. They were arrant rebels against the 
Government of the United States, but lacked the physical courage 
to carry out their doctrine; while they had the unscrupulousness 
to attack the legal rights of the South with any covert means in 
their power. The free-State abolitionistis became the aggressive 
leaders and were rapidly gathering all anti-slavery advocates into 
their ranks. Since it was these last who led the North in the latter 
fifties;, their acts at the time of and those following the Kansas elec- 
tions cannot be correctly estimated vsdthout following rather closely 
the free-State movement. This will lead me to treat more definitely 
the extent and scope of the rebellious movement in Kansas. 

Isaac T. Goodnow, in his overstrained kiudatory introduction 
to Doctor Charles Robinson's book. The Kansas Conflict, June 
1, 1891, says, "While Eli Thayer, providentially the founder 
of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, was flying over the 
North like a flaming meteor, stirring up the people for money and 
recruits in his grand crusade for the freedom of Kansas, Charles 
Eobinson, his trusty lieutenant, wonderfully prepared for it by a 
like providence by his California experience, was sternly holding 
the helm amid the storms and breakers in Kansas." (XIV.) 

On page 33 of his Kansas Crusade-, Mr. Thayer says, "... I 
was speaking all the way from Penobscot to the Schuylkill, and 
from the seaboard to the lakes. It was my mission to raise men 
and money for the security of freedom in the Territory, and to com- 
bine the Northern States in this work. I did not doiabt Robinson's 
ability or fidelity in the use of means." 

Here, then, is positive and direct information for the whole North 
as to the purposes and movements in and toward Kansas. This 
concern thus organized by Thayer and others was legalized, adver- 
tised, and in a high state of ferment before any steps were taken in 
Mi'ssouri or other Southern States to offset its influence. It was 
chartered by the legislature of Massachusetts, April, 1854, several 
days before the President had signed the bill opening the Kansas 
Territory. It was re-chartered in the spring of 1855 under the 
name of the New England Aid Company. Its capital stock was 
started at $1,000,000, though the charter members circulated a re- 
port that the capital was $5,000,000 ; and, in truth, the charter pro- 



178 NOKTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

vided for any capital "not to exceed $5,000,000.'" Of the capital 
stock there was at once paid or donated ninety-nine thousand dol- 
lars. As previously noted, Eli Thayer was president, Amos A. 
Lawrence, J. M. S. Williams, and Thomas Webb, and Prof. Sell- 
man of Yale University, were either officers or active members; 
and eight lumdred prominent Northern men had subscribed the 
capital stock; and later thousands aided the organization or came 
under its influence. This movement had behind it men of wealth 
and education. Especially was it boasted that "Amos A. Lawrence, 
J. M. S. Williams, and J. Lowell, of Botston, are merchant 
princes."'" 

On March 12, 1856, the Senate Committee on Territories (the 
one from which I have been quoting was a special House commit- 
tee) made a report on the Kansas troubles, and justly attached a 
great measure of the blame for Kansas conditions upon Northern 
societies operating to foster the abnonnal settlement of Kansas. 
Nettled at this report, the New England concern issued a verbose 
circular, dated Boston, June 17, 1856. Mr. Lawrence went as a 
witness before the House investigating committee to endeavor to 
vindicate his organization, and to endeavor to prevent its criminal 
connection with the Kansas sedition and rebellion being proven. 
He files his circular and made it a part of his testimony. He says . 
he read it before it was printed, and that "there is nothing in it but 
what is true.'^'" When we examine the circular we are struck with 
the recklessness exhibited by the management in an unsuccessful 
effort to escape responsibility for the bloodshed incident to Kan- 
sas politics. This circular asserts that associations were formed in 
Missouri, and "in active operation to interfere in the internal af- 
fairs of the Territory in a manner neither legal nor justifiable," 
before the concern headed by Mr. Thayer and Mr. Lawrence had 
an existence. Notice, Mr. Lawrence does not say that this circular 
contains nothing but what he believes to be true — he says "nothing 
im it but what is true.'"*" He admits that this same identical con- 
cern began work under another name: "the subscriptions of stock 
were made, and action had, until the spring of 1855, when a new 



'"Thayer, The Kansas Conflict, 27. 
3"App. Cong. Globe. 34 Cong., 1 sc 
""Evidence, 875. 
='»Ib., 875. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 179 

charter was obtained.'"" The truth is, that this concern, "b}^ meth- 
ods neither legal nor justifiable," actuallij, actively, began April, 
1854.^^* In the majority report to the House it is shown that tlie 
very first Southern organizations (and these without capital and 
with but a very limited local organization), or, as the Eeport calls 
them, "secret political organizations," or slavery "lodges," "Blue 
Loidges," etc., were organized "about the time that Governor A. H. 
Eeeder reached tlie Territory," which was "October A. D. 1854."'"" 
Then from April, 1854, to October the Northern organization had 
been diligently gathering money, and "like a flaming meteor arous- 
ing the North." In fact, emigrants under the organized leader- 
ship of the politicians were on their way to Kansas almost as soon 
as the President had signed the bill opening Kansas to both North 
and South. They had been arriving long before counter move- 
ments in the South were started. Colonel S. E. Tapan, who was 
the clerk of the so-called legislature which the North supported in 
opposition to the true Territorial legislature, and who were at- 
tempting to deliberate when dispersed by United States soldiers 
aided by civil ofiioers,""' writing to the Denver Tribune; in 1883, 
says, "When the first party of emigrants [of whom the writer was 
one] to Kansas from New England — as early as July, 1854, reached 
the city of St. Louis en route . . ." they were met by Doctor Chas. 
Eobinson, the accredited agent of the New England EmigTant Aid 
Company, who at once led the party to Lawrence."'" Sparks says 
this party left the North in June.''' The very earliest meeting held 
by Southern people to consider the impending movement, is placed 
by Wilder on July 29, 1854, on which day he says the "Piatt 
County Self-Defensive Association" met at Weston, Missouri.''" 
No counter move was attempted by this local body, nor was any 
from any other Southern source, as stated, attempted until Octo- 
ber.'" On the very next day after this meeting at Weston this 



w'Ib., 873. 

5*«Thayer, The Kansas Crusade, 25-6 ; N. L. Prentls. History Kansas, 45. 
'i^Majority Report, 3. 

'50Sen. Docs., 3d sess., 34 Cong., VoL III., No. 5, p. 65 et scq. ; Sparks, Exp. 
Am. People, 360. 

s^iilntro. Kans. Conf., XX. 
»=2Exii. Am. People, 357. 
"'^Annals of Kan., 37. 
s"2 Rhodes, History U. S., 78. 



180 XOETHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Nortlierii party arrived in Lawrence, and it was their well-known 
coming that caused the Weston meeting. Even before the pas- 
sage of tlie Kansas-Nebraska bill, the idea of an abnormal emigra- 
tion movement for political power, had its Northern origin.''" The 
petition to the legislature for a charter of the first emigrant or- 
ganization was circulated in March, 1854.''° This charter granted 
by the Massachusetts legislature declared its object to be "for the 
purpose of assisting emigi-ants to^ settle in the West." Its author 
said to the legislature: "This is a plan to prevent the forming of 
any more slave States. If you will give us this charter there shall 
never be another slave State admitted into tliis Union."'" "The 
charter was signed by the governor on the 26th day of April, and 
took effect immediately," says Eev. Edward Everett Hale. He then 
tells us that those named in it and others interested met and ac- 
cepted the charter on the 4th day of May, and appointed a com- 
mittee "to report a plan of organization and system of opera- 
tions."''' Reporting immediately, this committee proposed ( 1 ) that 
their directors "contract immediately, with some one of the com- 
2>eting lines of travel, for the conveyance of twenty thousand per- 
sons from Massachusetts to that place in the West which the direc- 
tors shall select for their first settlement.""" They alleged that 
their movement determines "the institutions of the unsettled ter- 
ritories" ;**" they declared that the effect of the movement would be 
that ''hj dispelling the fears that Kansas will be a slave state, the 
company will remove the only bar which now hinders its occupation 
by free settlers";'" they boldly proposed "to plant a free State in 
Kansas to the lasting advantage of the coimtry and to return a 
handsome profit to the stockholders upon their investment."*** Not- 
withstanding Mr. Lawrence's affidavit to. the contrary, there can be 
no legitimate historical doubt that all this was published to the 
world months before any similar movement or "Blue Lodge" or- 



355xhayer, The Kan. Crusade, 25. 
3"E. E. Hale, Kanzas and Nebraska (1854), 219. 
s"The Kansas Crusade, 26. 

s='Kanzas and Nebraska: An Account of the Em. Aid Companies (Boston, 
1854), 220. 
3591b., 223. 
s«»Ib., 226. 
3811b., 228. 
'"^Ib., 225 ; Thayer, The Kan. Cru., 28. 



XORTHERN- REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 181 

ganization in Missouri or elsewhere in the South. Dr. Hale, in his 
preface to "Kanzas and Xebraska/^ says, "I have . . . been favored 
with personal narratives by the agents of the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany. . . . Since the formation of the Emigrant Aid Co'mpanie's, 
I have been deeply interested in their success." This preface 
was dated, "Worcester, Mass., Aug. 21, 1854." The book was im- 
mediately published in Boston. These statements of the author dis- 
close that (1) the EmigTant Aid Company had already had agents 
in Kansas who had returned to Massachusetts; (2) more than one 
Emigrant Aid Company was then and prior thereto had been ac- 
tively in operation. 

ISTot only tlii's evidence is furnished us by Dr. Edward Everett 
Hale, but he gives us a most valuable bit of truth to the effect that 
at that time no threats against abolitionists were being made by 
Southerners in the "West, that there was no reason for the ISTorth- 
ern emigrant to fear bodily harm, and that whatever had been said 
in the West against abolitioni'sts had beeai "mildly" stated. Hear 
him: "It is the universal custom, at the West, for settlers in the 
same neighborhood to enter into associations for mutual protec- 
tion ; . . . An effort has been made, particularly by one person, to 
induce such associations to refuse to admit 'Abolitionists,' under 
the pretext that they would wish to 'run off' slaves from their neigh- 
bors' lands. Eesolutions to this effect have been passed in one or 
two instances, but have been rejected or neglected more often. 
When passed they have been mildly stated, and have amounted only 
to a resolution to support 'slaveholders in their legal rights'; dis- 
avowing any intention to interfere with persons who do not attempt 
to violate those rights, as the future laws shall state them."*" 
This is the only charge that he can find against pro-slavery people 
in either Missouri or Kansas, — and this was some time after the 
free-State movement had started from the JSTorth. 

Yet Mr. Thayer started his well-armed and highly protected 
emigrant bands sweeping down from the North with the boast, 
"That we should put a cordon of free States from Minnesota to the 
Gulf of Mexico, and stop the forming of slave States. After that 
we should colonize the northern border States and exterminate 



183 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

slavery.'-"" Within a few pages of where he testified to the mild 
and peaceful actions of the Southern emigrants in that early day 
of August, 1854, the now venerable Dr. Edward Everett Hale sent 
a similar boast to them and to the South : "Every indication now 
points to victory ... It ife gained unless the great principles of 
association in a great cause fail as it never failed before. . . . That 
victory will be won I""' 

Thus was the issue forced upon the South; thus did wealtli and 
superior force endeavor to throttle the local affairs of existing and 
prospective States. Fire and sword were destined to be their hand- 
maid, yet high officials of the movement resorted to perjury and un- 
blushing prevarication to cover their movements and hide from 
the world the time history of the causes leading to the bloody close 
of America's second great epoch. Follow the record, and let us 
see that this is true ; and more, let us see that the usual version of 
the Kansas story rests upon a rotten foundation. 

In tlie Journal of the Rev. Theo. Parker, of Boston, dated April 
2, 1854, he says, "Saw the Kansas party go off . . . about forty, 
nearly half women and children. There were twenty Sharp's Rights 
of the People in their hands, of the new and improved edition, and 
divers Colt's six-shooters also, . . . Those rifles and pistols were 
to defend their soil from the American Government, which wishes 
to plant slavery in Kansas."'" 

In his deposition, p. 873 et seq., in the Evidence of the Cong, report, 
Mr. Lawrence asserts that no firearms were ever bought by the 
Emigrant Aid Company, and that this company has never "inter- 
fered with the internal affairs of [Kans.] Territory^'; and that 
as a "company" it was not opposed to the Kansas-lN'ebraska act, 
and that it meant to settle Kansas with "an intelligent" popula- 
tion.^' In the memorial of the same company over the signature of 
J. M. S. Williams, S. Cabot, Jr., L. B. Eussell, C. J. Higgins, and 
W. B. Spooner, which was filed before Congress in protest against 
the report of March 12, 1856, by the Senate Committee on Terri- 
tories, they allege, "This company has never invested a dollar in 
any of the implements of war."°°* 



"*The Kan. Crusade, 32. 

"'Kansas and Neb.. 247. 

"•Frothingham, Life of Theo. Parker. 435-6. 

•"Sp. Cong. Rep., Ev., 876. 

••'Appendix Cong. Globe, 1 sess., 34 Cong., 8.53. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 183 

In liis Kansas Conflict, page 133, Charles Kobinson says that 
"Geo. Deitzler was sent with a letter to Eli Thayer [president of 
this same company of which Mr. Lawrence made the above state- 
ment under oath] for one himdred Sharp's rifles." On the same 
page Mr. Deitzler says, "Only a few days after the election of March 
the 30th, ... I presented my letter to Mr. Thayer [at Worcester, 
Mass.]. . . Within an hour after our arrival in Boston, the execu- 
tive committee of the Emigrant Aid Society [of which Mr. Law- 
rence spoke as above] held a meeting, and delivered to me an order 
for one hundred Sharp's rifles. . . . The guns were packed on the 
following Sunday, and I started for home on Monday." He ar- 
rived in Lawrence, Kansas, about the last of April, scarce a month 
after the election. The guns were labeled "books," and Mr. Deitz- 
ler calls them "Beecher Bibles." It was after this delivery to Mr. 
Deitzler of guns that Mr. Lawrence made the above statement. In 
July, 1855, as Mr. Robinson sets forth in his book, he sent "Maj. 
J. B, Abbott to Boston for guns" to equip a company of the rebels 
which Abbott had raised and drilled near Lawrence. On the letter 
written by Robinson and carried North by Abbott, this endorse- 
ment was made : 

Office of New Englajtd Emigrant Aid Co., 
No. 3 Winter St., Boston, Aug. 10, 1855. 
Dr. Chas. Eobinson. within mentioned, is an agent of the Emigrant Aid 
Company, and is worthy of implicit confidence. We cheerfully recommend 
Mr. J. B. Abbott to the public. 

C. H. BRANSCOIVIB, Sec. pro tem.* 

Mr. Robinson continues: 

"Major Abbott also procured a mountain howitzer with ammuni- 
tion, as well as Sharp's rifles. During the spring and summer sev- 
eral invoices of arms were received for different parts of the Ter- 
ritory, nearly all furnished through the assistance of persons con- 
nected with the Aid Company. The following letter will show the 
interest taken by Amos A. Lawrence, one of the most earnest and 
efficient friends Kanfeas ever had : 

'Boston, Aug. 11, 1855. 
Dear Sir: 

Request IVIr. Palmer to have one hundred Sharp's rifles packed in casks 
like hardware and to retain them subject to my order. Also to send the 



►Kan. Conf., 124-5. 



184 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

bill to nie by mail. I will pay it either with my note, according to the 
terms ag-reed on between liim and Dr. Webb, or in cash, less interest at 
seven per cent. 

Yours truly, AMOS A. LAWRENCE. 

Mr. J. B. Abbott, 

Care A. Rogers, Hartford, Conn.' 

'Boston, Aug. 20, 1855. 
My Dear Sir: 

This installment of carbines is far from being enough, and I hope the 
measures you are taking will be followed up imtil eveiy organized company 
of trusty men in the Territory shall be supplied. Dr. Cabot will give me the 
names of any gentlemen here who subscribe money. ... I promise them it 
shall be repaid in cash or in rifles. . . . 

You must dispose of them where they will do the most good, and for this 
purpose you should advise with Dr. Robinson and Mr. Pomeroy. 

Yours truly, AMOS A. LAWRENCE. 

Mr. J. B. Abbott, 

Care A. Rogers, Hartford.' 

'Boston, August 24, 1855. 
My Dear Sir : 

The rifles ought to be on the way. Have you forwarded them? The 
Topeka people will require half of these. 

Yours truly, AMOS A. LAWRENCE. 

Mr. J. B. Abbott.' " 

The reader may be able to reconcile these facts with the state- 
ments in Mr. Lawrence's deposition; the writer cannot. In a note, 
the historian Ehodes says, "Amos A. Lawrence was a gentleman of 
wealth and social position in Boston ; was treasurer of the Emigrant 
Aid Company ; was personally a large contributor to it."'"" 

No wonder Southern people lost confidence in Northern Con- 
gressmen who were backing the Kansas rebels, when, in the face of 
such facts, which were either then known or of which they remained 
in wilful ignorance, men like Representative Trafton, of Massachu- 
sette, would defend these organizations as did he on March 12, 
1856, when in a speech in Congress he said, "Allow me to say that 
there has never been purchased by the emigrant aid society a single 
musket or rifle, or arm of defence of any kind whatever. They 
have never done this thing charged.""" Or, on February 18, 1856, 



=>«»History "U. S., Vol. III., 82. 

^oApp. Cong. Globe, 34 Cong., 1 sess., 1.51. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 185 

when in the United States Senate, Henry Wilson, also of Massa- 
chusetts, said, "Sir, the emigrant aid society of New England has 
violated no law, human or divine; they have not performed illegal 
actions or any act inconsistent with the obligations of patriotism, 
moralit}^ or religion."^'^ 

But since it was so, why all this marslialing into Kansas of the 
munitions ot war ? Why the great urgency thu.s shown ? The his- 
tories are full of stories of invading, armed, "murderous'^ bands of 
Missourians; and we are taught that these guns were for protec- 
tion of life and property against an aggressive Southern movement ; 
but follow the record and let the sober light of the facts in their 
proper order guide us to a right conclusion — even if it be to find 
that rebellion — but let each see for himself. 

Up to the time these implements of war went West, not a i*^orth- 
ern man had been hurt, or seriously threatened, on account of his 
voting or politics; nor had any violence been done or offered to 
any quiet, peaceable, free-State man. Up to the time that we see 
all this rush of guns from the North not a man in the whole Terri- 
tory had been killed or in any way assaulted ; no fighting by reason 
of politics, and, in truth, remarkably little under any circumstances 
considering the excitement and frontier life, — ^had occurred at a 
single voting place in the entire Territory. The first man killed 
lost hife life in the fall of 1855, November 21, months after the 
North had gathered in battle array against lawful authority. This 
first killing was that of Dow, a free-State man, by Coleman, a pro- 
slavery man. The homicide, however, had nothing whatever to do 
with politics. It entirely grew out of a dispute over a land claim.'"^ 
Just at tliat event we discover the initials of open conflict. Sheriff 
Jones, elected at the ]\Iarch election, the lawfulness and legality of 
which I examined at some length to show that open conflict began 
in resistance to legally constituted authorit}% — immediately ar- 
rested Coleman. The Nortli had prepared to resist all authority — 
it had determined and was now prepared to force upon Kansas its 
demands, — ^demands, let us not forget, which had no regard what- 
ever for the rights of the negro. We shall see later that their fight 
for a "free State" was far from a fight for the mitigation of the 



s'llb., 90. 

»"Repts. of Corns., 36 Cong., 2 sess.. Vol. III., 14. 



186 XORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

sufferings of slavery. Eather than wait to see tlie result of the legal 
proceedings against Coleman, a IS^ortlieni free-State man by the 
name of Branson and a large number of his own party met and 
boldly declared that they would take the execution of Coleman into 
their own hands. Harrison Buckley, a friend of Coleman, hearing 
of these threats, swore out peace warrants. Acting under these 
warrants, Sheriff Jones arrested Branson, shortly after which he 
was met by a party of armed free- State men who demanded of him 
and by show of superior force obtained the release of Branson. On 
the night of tliis rescue, the homes of Buckley and Coleman, the 
latter yet in custody, both were burned by incendiaries."' Eeliable 
men alleged that the Buckley family w^as turned out of doors with 
the loss of everything but the clothing in which they fled.'" Now, 
let us note: (1) this rescue occurred November 26th, only five days 
after the killing; (2) the rescuing party had gathered at the home 
of J. B. Abbott; (3) this i's the same J. B. Abbott who had been 
sent in the July previous to Boston for gune,'" and who "also pro- 
cured a mountain howitzer with ammunition, as well as Sharp's 
rifles"; (4) the rescuing party fell behind the small army which 
had been gathered some months previous, and which had been 
armed by Amos A. Lawrence and other Northern men in August 
previous."* Thus defied, the officers of the Territory found them- 
selves face to face with a fortified military organization which for- 
cibly prevented the execution of the legal processes. Lawrence was 
the fortified stronghold of this belligerent party. Gathering a 
posse, the sheriff went down upon Lawrence; and thus began what 
some winters call the "Wakarusa war, or first attack upon Law- 
rence."'" Later I shall notice some details of this "fight," the 
chief concern now^ is to see the beginning of actual conflict and its 
object. 

No fair historian can truthfully claim that this gathering of 
arms and marshaling of drilled companies were needed for the pro- 
tection of either life or property. It i's amusing, as well as some- 
wliat significant, to remember that Dr. Eobinson says that the 



""Repts. Corns., 36 Cong., 2 sess.. Vol. III., 14. 

'"J. Douglas Brewerton, The War in Kan. (1856), 150. 

'■'P. 183. supra. 

^I'^Sup. 184 and inf. 

'"Rept. Corns., 36 Cong., 2 sess., Vol. III., pt. 1, p. 15. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 187 

Northern side hired a "bully/' and that he "frightened every pro- 
slavery man from the field.-" Just think of it, one man ran all the 
"Missouri ruffians" off the turf in a few days ! Be that as it may, 
one thing the fads make certain: these guns were the engines of 
bold, aggressive sedition. In support of this hear Dr. Robinson, 
writing to Amos A. Lawrence, November 1, 1895 : "A few of us 
dared to take a stand in defiance of the legislature, and meet the 
consequences. We were convinced that our success depended upon 
the measure. . . . For a while we had to contend with opposition, 
from the faint-hearted, but by persevering in our course, by intro- 
ducing resolutions into conventions, and canvassing the TeiTitory, 
repudiation became universal with free-State men. . . . We con- 
ceived it important to disown the legislature . . . before we knew 
the character of its laws. . . .'"'' It was to maintain this position 
that the North furnished thousands of money, thousands of im- 
proived guns — one enthusiast wrote that the Sharp's rifles Avould 
shoot a "thousand times a minute" — and not content with the or- 
dinary engines of death, cannon came to crown the work. "The 
howitzer was procured in New York through the aid of Horace 
Greeley, Olmstead, and others.""^ 

In stramge contradiction to his rebellious actions, Dr. Eobinson 
acknowledged the lawful authority of the legislature, repudiation of 
which he helped to become universal, by putting in operation a 
charter passed by it.^'" 

I cannot resist the inclination to notice one more of Mr. Law- 
rence's statements. It is pertinent to examine the credibility of 
these men because the reason for all this preparedness which first 
burst upon public gaze in the Branson rescue, lies hidden beneath 
their attempts at misleading the public; and the usual version of 
the Kansas troubles rests upon their credibility. The groundless 
claims of writers concerning the causes for arming the Kansas 
abolitionists, have been so persistently pushed forward that I feel 
that the light should shine even at the expense of encroaching on 
the patience of the general reader. On page 874 of his deposition, 
Mr. Lawrence says that no pledge concerning their political opin- 



S'SRans. Conflict. 161 : Spring's Kansas, 61. 

'■"Kans. Conf., 126. 

38»Kan. Hist. Cols., Vol. V., 216. 



188 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

ions was taken from, those whom they as'sisted. This claim is 
abundantly refuted by credible witnesses who deposed before the 
investigating committee. I need here introduce but one, Mr. John 
E. Ingalls, who was a native of Massachusetts, and who personally 
knew some of the officers of this New England emigrant incubator — 
Mr. Webb, an agent, in particular. Mr. Ingalls says, "The under- 
standing was that they would help none but those who voted their 
ticket." It is proven by numbers of other witnesses who were before 
the investigating committee that many hundreds of the Northern 
abolition emigrants came to the Territory, voted and went home, 
sajdng they had come only to vote. The political faith held by the 
men sent out by Mr. Lawrence's company was the paramount con- 
cern of its promoters. Mr. havrremie is impeached by the greater 
weight of evidence; was he evading or mistaken? Could he have 
been mistaken? He speaks positively and for the actions of his 
company whether performed by himself or by others of its officers. 

Also in striking contradiction to such statements as he made and 
which are sometimes since repeated, is tlie admission made in the 
address to Congi-^ess by Mr. Lawrence's company. There they say, 
"We are perfectly willing to add, however, what you must already 
be aware of, that when we organized o^urselves to extend such fa- 
cilities to emigrants from the East, who knew that they would be 
men who meant to live in a free State. They are men who live by 
hard work, as we all do; and they would not go anywhere where 
they thought that the permanent institutions of the State would 
make hard work disgraceful. They knew that by the principles of 
the Kansas-Nebraska act the actual settlers must control the in- 
stitutions of Kansas and Nebraska. They were willing to take the 
chances of an appeal to this principle.'"*^ 

The credibility of Ur. Charles Robinson is of prime importance, 
because perhaps no one of the agitators of that day has done more 
to mislead no small per cent, of the otherwise standard non- Ameri- 
can and Northern writers. There has been, and of those of them 
who yet survive there is yet, a bitter fight between some of the lead- 
ers of the Kansas movement. They have done much to give the 
world a chance to estimate the credibility of the respective parti- 
cipants. This "fratericidal war" has produced much to sustain the 



««>App. Cong. Glebe, 34 Cong., 151. 



NORTHERlSr REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 189 

claims of the South that wealthy and influential Northern men 
were creating a popular clamor against the Southern people, — a 
rage which produced death and loss to the South and one which the 
party who so soon obtained the control of the Federal Government 
said they could not more effectively control, — for base and ignoble 
purposes. William Elsey Connelley in "An Appeal to the Eecord" 
has compiled some material to prove "Eobinson's general corrup- 
tion in ofiice and the bond swindles of his administration," and as- 
serts that Eobinson's and Thayer^s "books are worthless, or nearly 
so."'"" Of course, this assertion is valuable only to the extent that 
it is sustained, and for that purpose he quotes from newspapers and 
other sources contemporary with the events of that period, pub- 
lished by free-State and abolition men. It will be remembered 
that he is one of John Brown^s strong friends, and hence this recent 
production of his will have the more weight since it combes from one 
by no means a friend to the "border ruffians of Missouri" or the 
anti-bellum Southern position. But aside from the evidence which 
he presents to sustain his charges of faithlessness and corruption 
against Doctor Eobinson; or to show that the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany "was organized for speculative purposes," and that "making 
Kansas a free State was incidental to its design, and was an issue 
used principally to induce people to subscribe for stock and con- 
tribute money,"^'^ we have facts furnished by the earlier sources 
which must not be neglected. 

On page 899 of the Evidence in the Congressional investigating 
committee report. Doctor Eobinson says, "I left Massachusetts 
for Kansas in June, 1854, ... At that time no Emigrant Aid So- 
ciety with which I have since been connected, was in existence, and, 
consequently, I could not act as agent of such a society. My first con- 
nection with an emigrant aid society, as official agent, was some 
time in September, 1854." 

There is not the slightest doubt of the existence — Mr. Thayer says, 
and the records bear him out, "before the Kansas-Nebraska bill 
passed the Senate"^** — and organization and operation of this emi- 
grant "societj" or "company" — call it what we may, no equivoca- 



S821b., Topeka, Kans., 1903, p. 

=8=Ib., 109. 

s84The Kansas Crusade, 36. 



190 XORTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERX SEC'ESSIOX. 

tion avoids responsibility — lefore Eobinson left Massachusetts. 
Thayer says, "It was at one of the Chapman Hall meetings that I 
first saw Charles Eobinson (afterward Governor of Kansas), and en- 
gaged him to act as agent of the Emigrant Aid. Company.'""' This 
was not only prior to September, 1854, but was prior to Eobinson's 
leaving Massachusetts. At the time Mr. Thayer "engaged him to 
act as agent of the Emigrant Aid Company," Eobinson met the di- 
rectors of the Company, and at their solicitation he agreed to start 
for Kansas June 28, 1854.''° But Doctor Blackmar, Eobinson's 
biographer, must have felt the force of the words of the sworn depo- 
sition, for he tries to ease the governor-doctor over the pitfall; he 
speaks of the new charter wliich was little more than the same old 
company with an enlarged list of incorporators, which Thayer ob- 
tained for his scheme in Februar}^, 1855, and says, "It was at this 
time Charles Eobinson appears on the scene of the Kansas conflict. 
He was chosen a financial agent of the Emigrant Aid Company, 
with his field of operations in Kansas.'"'" But in another plaee 
Doctor Blackmar says, "In June, 1854, Doctor Chas. Eobinson, of 
Fitchbum, and Mr. Charles H. Branson, of Holyoke, Massachusetts, 
were sent to explore the Territory of Kansas and select a site for 
the location of the emigrants sent out under the protection of the 
Emigrant Aid Company. . . . While the explorations of these ad- 
vance agents were taking place, a company \i. e., a band, "party," 
he calls them in the next sentence] was being formed in New Eng- 
land to establish a colony in Kansas. Twenty-nine emigrants 
formed this first party," and these came to St. Louis, "where they 
were met by Doctor Eobinson. The Doctor at once looked after 
general needs, and secured transportation on the steamer 'Pole 
Star,' which left St. Louis July 24th for Kansas City"; and the 
party arrived, accompanied by the Doctor, in Kansas July 31, 
1854."'* This same Doctor Eobinson met another and larger party 
a few weeks later.''" Hence, the Emigrant Aid organization was in 
existence when Eobinson left Massachusetts ; he was employed by its 
officers "to act as agent"; he did so act in more than one way; and 



'85lb., 33. 

3S6Frank W. Blackmar, Ph. D., The Life of Chas. Robinson (Topeka, 1902), 

ssHb., 103. 

»s'lb.. 111. 

=s^Ib., 112. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 191 

this employment and agency and action thereunder were months 
prior to September, 1854. Was Doctor Eobinson cringingly evading, 
or mistaken? Yet the historian, James Schouler, says, "Chas. 
Eobinson, . . . the best of the whole community for keeping them 
faithful to high ideals" ;'°" and Dr. von Hoist : "Doctor Robinson, a 
circumspect and clear-sighted man.'"'" 

Or, what must be the conclusion as to the liistorical credibility of 
Governor Eeeder and the majority of the special Kansas investi- 
gating committee ? Eeeder was backed by a large number of ISTorth- 
ern Congressmen. His position and statements did much to mould 
the public opinion of the North and to embitter them against the 
South. The declarations of the majority report of the investigat- 
ing committee have been almost literally followed by those who pro- 
fess to give us the truth about the Kansas struggle. They write the 
Northern version of that period, and as I showed in my early quo- 
tations, this version has come do^uoi in school histories now in use 
even in the South. Grovernor Eeeder admitted the legality of the 
legislature, except in a few voting districts which he set aside and 
in which he ordered new elections, the result at which has been seen. 
When relieved of his office and received into full standing with the 
abolitionists, he repudiated his own official acknowledgment. Was 
he evading, or mistaken? Doctor Eobinson says Governor Eeeder 
was a man of "integrity." On which occasion? When he commis- 
sioned, convened, and recognized the Lecompton legislature; or 
when he afterwards called this same body "bogus" to the public and 
entered the ranks of rebellion against it; ot when he wrote the pri- 
vate letter which I gave in part, admitting that the Northern party 
were in the wrong ? He had no more light last than first. Yet Mr. 
Ehodes credits him thus : "Eeeder was an able lawyer and a man 
of eneregy and integrity."''' The majority of the Congressional 
committee say in their report that not an officer from constable up 
in the entire Territory had been legally elected. In tiie same re- 
port, but at another place, they admit that General Whitfield, on 
November 39th, 1854, M^as legally elected. "Every election in the 
Territory," they declare — and note how that declaration has since 



'""History U. S.. Vol. V., 330. 
'"iHistory U. S., Vol. V., 174. 
392History U. S. (Harpers), Vol. II. 



192 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

been perpetuated — has been controlled by Missourians. They admit 
Whitfield's was not; that of May 22, 1855, held in the sixteenth 
election district for the re-election of representatives whose election 
Governor Eeeder had declared void, was proven to be entirely with- 
out fraud, save a few non-resident votes not enough to change the 
legal result, and to be a clean, honest victory for the Southern side, 
to say nothing of the facts which I have presented concerning that 
of March 30th. Were they mistaken, or evading ? 

Another source of information concerning the struggle between 
the North and the South as it was fought in Kansas, which is pro- 
nounced by some present JSTorthern writers and educators very high 
in authority as "most impartial," is that given by the English 
writer and newspaper correspondent, Thos. H. Gladstone, a relative 
of the late William E. Gladstone. In another connection, I shall 
show that he is anything other than "most impartial," and shall 
show that in accepting him as a source of accurate information, 
writers have rested upon a very misleading witness. 

While the New England Emigrant Aid Company, whose officers 
and actions thus far have largely engaged our attention, was the 
most prominent, it was by no means all of its class. Some were 
more quiet in their work, yet all kept busy. Phillips gives us the 
names of some of them that were operating at the time he wrote : 

"The American Settlement Compan}^, of New York City. This 
company founded the Council City settlement. The secretary is 
Theo. Dwight, 110 Broadway, New York." He then gives the New 
England Emigrant Aid Company, and mentions its officers and 
active members with whom he includes the now venerable Doctor 
Edward Everett Hale. He proceeds : "The Vegetarian Settlement 
Company, The New York Kansas League, the Octagon Settlement 
Company, and some minor ones.""'' 

There was an organization called the "Kansas Aid Company" 
which was organized in Washington city "immediately after the 
passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act." Honorable D. Mace, a re- 
resentative from Indiana, was an officer of this organization. In his 
sworn deposition he says, "The leading, primary object was to pre- 
vent the introduction of slavery into Kansas" ; and he also says that 
he believed "vigorous steps" were needed to maintain Northern 



3"3Phinips, The Conquest of Kansas (1856), 25. 



NORTHEP.X REBELLION AND 80UTHEKX SECESSION. 193 

views there. He continues : "We issued a circular to the people of 
the country, of the Northern states particularly," . . . "and urged 
that steps be taken to induce persons from the Xorth, who were op- 
posed to- slavery, to^ go there [Kansas] and prevent its introduction 
if possible." He says many circulars were sent out, and various 
communications had, just what all was, said he does not remember ; 
but the object, he says, was to indiice men to go to Kansas "who 
would, at all elections, vote against the institution of slavery.""" 
Mr. Goodrich, a Congressman from Massachusetts, was president; 
]\Ir. Fenton, representative from Xew York, was one of the vice- 
presidents. Many of the N'orthern Congressmen became members 
and contiribut#d to further the objects of the society. Many of 
these organizations were in active operation, be it constantly re- 
membered, months before any Southern organization, designed 
either for initial aggression or to have a counteracting influence, 
was put on foot, or likely conceived. They were prior to the "Blue 
Lodges" of Missouri, and had commenced their crusade long before 
Missouri rose to her own defence. 

Moral Effect of Emigilixt Ixcubators. 

In jMissouri, and in a few places in other Southern States, emi- 
grant aid societies were finally organized. These were on a small 
scale, almost entirely without capital, and spasmodic in effort. 
Southern newspapers appealed to Southern men to move to Mis- 
souri or to Kansas. We often find pages of certain books filled with 
quotations from such Southern appeals. But there is a funda- 
mental, underlying fact in connection with such statements or ap- 
peals in the Southern press, which is generally not clearly brought 
out or entirely obscured. And that is that the state^legalized, 
widely-patronized, highly-capitalized I^orthern concerns were the 
aggressors, and but for this moral and political sin such movements 
in the South would never have been, and such appeals from the 
Southern press would never have been heard. Counter Southern 
action became a matter of self-preservation as entirely justifiable 
as the defence of one's hearthstone could possibly be. Think of 
what the emigrant aid movement really was. By such movements 



s=-'Evidence. Com. R., 34 Cong., 12, No. 200, p. 829. 
13 



194 NORTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

any section of the United States tlien or now could dominate tlie 
politics of any other section. Such efforts defeat the primary ob- 
ject of a republican government ; they lead to chaotic anarchy. As 
touching the moral effect of these organizations, I am sure that a 
few more extracts from the evidence taken by the Congressional 
committ.ee will be both profitable and interesting. 

One unimpeached witness' says, "1 do not think there would have 
been any excitement at all, if Free-State men had emigrated here 
in the usual way, as had always been the case in the settlement of 
the Western territories. It was my feeling, and the feeling of the 
community in which I resided, that Free-State men might come 
and intermix among us in the Territory in a friendly and social 
manner, and advocate the policy of making it a free State; and if, 
in organizing the Territory into a State, they should have a ma- 
jority, we were prepared to submit to it in peace and quietness." 

I stated as one of the reasons why the South was forced to take 
the steps leading to final secession, that she had the most conclusive 
reasons to believe that illegal, unwarranted efforts were imminent 
to interfere in the internal affairs of the existing States. She 
learned of this from threats and overt acts, the only way one indi- 
vidual or any number of persons can judge of the intention of any 
other or others. The South was boldly told by tliis party of rich 
agitating ISTorthemers that when JSTorthern political ambitions had 
been realized in Kansas, first Missouri and then the entire agri- 
cultural South would be dominated by this Northern exodus and 
politically incubated emigration. Is there a Northern State that 
would have been less resentive if the situation had been reversed? 
Let me intro'duce evidence showing that first Missouri and then the 
South acted in defence against this movement. On this point the 
witness which we have just heard continued : 

"We understood and believed, from the declarations of men of 
their party who came here, and what we saw in the newspapers, that 
the ultimate design was to effect the institutions of Missouri and 
make it a free-State. . . . Emigraxit Aid men told me that they were 
pledged before they left home to make it a free-State.'"^' 

On the same point hear another creditable witness, likewise under 
oath : 



'■••'Evidence, p. 855. 



NORTHEKX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 195 

"The first thing that excited and alarmed the Missourians was 
the incorporation by the legislature of Massachusetts of a corpora- 
tion with a capital of five million dollars, as was understood [it 
must be remembered that Northern men and papers reported that 
this was the correct sum, though, as we have seen, it was left to the 
incorporators to fix a sum not exceeding $5,000,000] for the purjwse 
of colonizing Kansas Territor}- with abolitionists."""' 

A man by the name of Lincoln, an agent for some of these aboli- 
tion organizations, told another witness that the object was to 
bring men to Kansas to vote it a free-State, with no intention on 
the part of many to become permanent residents. Otliers declared 
that they had come for no purpose other than to vote.^°^ Another 
witness met a colony of Englishmen who openly declared that they 
had been paid to vote with the ISTorthem men.^°' 

J. H. Day, of Minnesota., under oath, stated that he gathered his 
understanding of what the Xorth meant to do from literature pur- 
porting to be issued by the emigrant aid organizations, and from 
the New York Tribune, and he understood that after they had con- 
quered Kansas, "then the emigrants were to pull up stakes and 
move to O'tlier places and do likewise. The Tribune, I think, said . . . 
they would carry the war into Africa; meaning I suppose [d] that 
they would commence operations in Missouri. This I understood to 
be the case before I came into the Territory. . . . The general belief 
that such was the case was the cause of the diflSculty here."^*° Such 
threats and declarations, unaccompanied by any movement, might 
have been treated lightly. But the ISTorth not only talked; she 
began to do what she said she would do. iSI^ot a few in Missouri 
knew of these threats, either. Milton J. Payne, of Kansas City, in 
his deposition, says, "It was a general rumor that they intended to 
make this [Kansas] a free-State, and then interfere in the affairs 
of slavery in Missouri."*"" 

These depositions are not exceptions. What they say is not 
refuted or injured by other evidence. These give us the true state 
of the Southern knowledge and feeling. Thev show that bv threats 



3''«Evidence, p. 863. 
'"^Evidence, p. 1144. 
s='SEvidence, p. 854. 
3»9Evidence, p. 526. 
""Evidence, p. 837. 



I'JG xoi;thei!N kebelhon and southekx .secession. 

and acts the Xortli alarmed the South. If a Southern emigration 
to-day were to set in for some State in the North with the avowed 
object of controlling her elections, after which the emigrants and 
their leaders declared they meant to move into another State and 
sliapo its laws according to their ideas and conceptions, the Xorthern 
blood would warm as quickly as that of the South under a like insult. 
By no means are we left to the depositions alone. Hear once 
more the man of power who moved the North as no other man ever 
did, who wrought upon the purse strings of "rich New Engiandcrs" 
so that single individuals put thousands at his disposal — for in- 
stance, J. M. S. Williams subscribed ten tlioiisand dollars and 
Charles Francis Adams twenty-five thousand*"' — as he boasts of his 
willing-ness to overcome the weak, as he exultingly flaunts in tlie 
face of the South his power, Eli Thayer, "shrewd, sharp-tongued," 
testifies Schouler,*"" declares the North was conscious, "That in this 
contest the South had not one element of success. We had much 
greater numbers,''' he continues, "much greater wealth, greater 
readiness of organization, and better facilities of migration. That 
we would put a cordon of free States from Minnesota to the Gulf 
of ]\Iexico, and top the forming of slave States. After that we 
should colonize the northern border States.""' This interference 
"by methods neither legal nor justifiable," in the local afEairs of the 
existing States, Thayer had in mind before his Emigrant Aid So- 
ciety was incorporated, the movements of which in Kansas were 
meant to be merely preliminary to deeper plans. Speaking of the 
charter of this Emigrant Aid organization, he says, "It was my pur- 
pose, when I wrote that charter, to be done with Kansas in 1855, 
and then, without loss of time and with increased capital, to have 
bought up large tracts of worn-out lands in Virginia. Of these it 
was my purpose to give one-half, in forty-acre lots, to our emigrants 
in the free States. The remaining half would be worth not less 
than fonr times the whole cost, as soon as the emigrants had occu- 
pied their homesteads. Two years of such work, by such a com- 
panv, in Virginia, would have made her as secure for the Union in 
lS(il as ]\Iassachusetts was.""' At the time their movements to 



wiThayer, The Kansas Crusade, 33. 
^o^History TT. S., Vol. V., 323. 
^o^The Kansas Crusade, 32. 
^»qb.. .59. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 197 

Kansas were materializing, the plans against the Southern States 
at large were' known from the halls of Congress to the remotest fron- 
tiers. The South was advised that they proposed "at all hazards" 
to take Kansas, "And further, that whenever the Territory shall be 
organized as a free State the trustee shall dispose of all its [the 
Emigrant Aid Company] interests there, replace by the sales the 
money laid out, declare a dividend to the stockholders, and that 
they then select a new field, and make similar arrangements for the 
settlement and organization of another free Stiate."*"' Thus in 
books which Avere issued before the contest began, in their pros- 
pectus, and through the declarations of their emigTants, the aggres- 
sive challenge went forth from the officers of these Northern or- 
ganizations. 

I do not overestimate the power and influence of this Thayer 
movement. When the South took alarm at it her fears were well 
founded. Says Schouler, "The inspirational force of Thayer and his 
parent com23any led to the formation of hundred's of Kansas leagues 
and Kansas committees in our Northern States, all loyal to one an- 
other, all combined for a common purpose."""' Mr. Schouler relies 
upon Thayer as his authority, together with Prof. Spring, whom I 
have frequently quoted. He sa3's that this Northern movement pro- 
posed, "in the first place, to make Kansas a free State, and then 
to sell out and select and settle some other field, and so go on until 
every possible area of the Union became reclaimed by the genius of 
free labor."*'" A "magnificent" "enterprise," exclaimis Mr. Schouler 
in admiration and a]:)proval ! 

It will be remembered that in my examination of the elections, 
I sho\red that by granting all the fraud had been on the Southern 
side, and that all the illegal votes had been cast by Missoiurians not 
entitled to vote, even then the Southern ticket was legally elected. 
I desire now to offer cumulative evidence to bear out my statement 
that much fraud and illegality were perpetrated by Northerners, 
and that the statements in the histories that illegality and intimi- 
dation won a Soutliern victory are untrue. Hence, I subjoin a few 
extracts from representative witnesses, who deposed before the Con- 



"'App. Cong. Globe, 34 Cong., 1 sess., 07. 

^"'Histoi-y U. S. (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1S91), Vol. V., p. 325-6. 

«7Ib., 324. 



198 NORTHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

gressional committee, which show the true state of affairs at the 
time. 

Adam Fisher, a free-State man, said, "I do not know of any 
Free-State man being deterred . . . from voting on account of his 
political views."^°* Northern men secured non-resident steamboat 
hands to vote the abolition ticket."" About one hundred Eastern 
emigrants wintered in Kansas City, went over to the spring election, 
and immediately returned going North again."" One passenger 
agent carried hundreds of Northern emigrants, "the majority had 
satchels" only, and "some had no baggage at all," and some said 
they would go home after the election, as they had come merely to 
vote.^'^ Another witness saw many abolitionists, who said they were 
going to vote, on their way back going North again after the elec- 
tion."^ Hundreds had no "apparent implements of husbandry, with 
but carpet sacks. . . .""' Many of the Northern people were boastful 
and made loud threats. Speaking of them, a Kansas merchant in 
his deposition says, "I do not thinlv their baggage looked like that 
of emigrants who intended to remain. ... I think after the elec- 
tion they went back as fast as they came before the election. . . . 
Those I heard speak, and who appeared to be leaders, said they were 
coming to Kansas to vote.""* C. E. Kearney, a steamboat captain 
on the Missouri river, says one hundred and fifty abolition emi- 
grants offered at one time "double passage to be brought up in time 
for the election.""' In Lawrence, Mr, Pomeroy, who was an agent 
for one of the emigrant societies, led in one string, like marching 
soldiers, about one hundred newly-arrived emigrants, off the boats 
but a few hours, to the polls and voted them."" Another witness 
says: 

"Dr. Eobinson had been gone East, so I was told, and he returned 
to town the evening of the day of the election, and the first I saw of 
him was coming across from Lawrence to the polls of the election 



^sEvidence, p. 


529 


*o»Ib. 


531. 




"»Ib. 


835-6. 




"lib. 


854. 




*mb. 


846. 




"3Ib. 


846. 




"^Ib. 


850. 




"5Ib. 


852. 




"»Ib. 


166. 





NOETHEEX EEBELLION AND SOUTHEEN SECESSIOX. 199 

with fifty or one hundred men, quite a string of them marching up 
to the polls. He marched them right up to the polls, and they voted 
the Free-State ticket, and then he marched them back. They were 
all strangers to me, and he had just come in wdth them that day. I 
knew most of the Free-State men residing in the district at that 
time.'^"^ 

Tliis was at the election of March 30, 1855, the second election 
held in the Territory, and the one at which the legislature, so vig- 
orously repudiated by the A^orth, was elected. These men could n®t 
by any possibility have legally voted ; they were just from the North 
a few hours, and had not had the requisite residence under the pre- 
scribed regulations. But read carefully as we may all the histories 
which we quoted on early Kansas elections some pages back, and 
many others like them, and not an intimation of such acts of il- 
legality on the part of the North do we find. No, not one ! That 
the facts here given are true there is not the least doubt. They 
were not disputed. Many historians have not told the whole story. 
We are told that Missourians voted illegal votes, but we are not told 
that such things as we have seen and the following were the true 
and reasonable cause for whatever the :Missourians or other South- 
em' men did. 

"Mr. Brown, the editor of the Herald of Freedom [Lawrence 
paper] stated on the day of the nomination that there need be no 
fear about their [abolitionists, or Free-State party] being beaten, as 
he had just received a letter from Mr. Slater [agent of the Northern 
societies] of St. Louis, info^rming him that there were between six 
and eight hundred Eastern men on the river on the way up, and 
would be up the day of the election, and three himdred would be at 
Lawrence. [And a large number actually did arrive and vote on the 
day of the election.] This thing was well understood, and the Mis-' 
sourians heard of it.""' 

The fact that the true record of the North in Kansas is either 
not told or obscured, and that continually we are reminded of the 
movements by Missouri "ruffians" and Southern men ^vithout 
"statesmanship or strategic ability," is an open admission that there 
are wrongs and illegalities which some one fain would hide. What 

"Hb.. 160. • 

*i8ib., 166. 



200 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTIIERX SECESSION. 

we here see is but one step in the long hid tier that led down to the 
Civil War. 

The rebellion in Kansas was an exotic — indigenous to the soil of 
the Xorth, and first cnltivated in Massachusetts. Prior to the pas- 
sage of tlie bill wliich gave both sections of the countr}' an equal 
opportunity for settlement in Kansas and other new territories, on 
February 27, 1854, at Pittsfield, Mass., a large public meeting, 
among its resolutions declared that "the citizens of the Free-States, 
must and iviU, at all hazards, and through all time, insist that 
slavery shall never he 'permitted north of 36° 30'.""'' Here is noth- 
ing less than a declaration of war. It can by no possibility ]ye con- 
strued to mean more, and certainly not less than that j\Iassachu- 
setts will not submit to republican government even where no in- 
juries are being inflicted upon her, — unless her interpretation of 
that govermiient be accepted. Such position is in full keeping with 
her past. It is the spirit of her then venerable J, Q. Adams who, 
backed by a petition from Massachu&etts citizens, on the 14th of 
June, 1842, presented the petition and moved "praying Congress 
to adopt immediate measures for the peaceful dissolution of the 
Union of these States." Between the insubordination of Massa- 
chusetts and the rebellion in Kansas there is but one distinction: 
in Kansas subterfuge and prevarication l)oth united to fill the ])lace 
left vacant for want of justification. 

The insubordinate Kansas legislature sent Lane, a man who had 
played on both sides, and ex-Governor Eeeder, a man who sought 
office at the expense of honesty, to Congi-ess to present a memorial, 
exhibit what they claimed to be a constitution, and asks that Kan- 
sas be admitted as a State, and that the bearers thereof be admitted 
as United States Senators ! Tlias memorial, after setting ont a num- 
ber of laws enacted by the rightful body of legislators, proceeded 
to declare that "it was the enactment of such laws that forced the 
people of Kansas to take the initiative step toward the formation of 
a state government.""" 

I have already pointed out that Governor Eol)inson, the man 
whom this faction claimed to have elected as their chief executive, 
admitted that armed repudiation anticipated by some months the 



*i»Coug. Globe. 

*20App. CoDg. Globe, 34 Cong.. 1 sess., 89 to 211 



NORTHERX EEBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSIOX. 201 

acts of the lawful legislature. It now remains to notice briefly the 
thoroughness and 'scope of the seditious movement thus early in- 
augiirated. This will show the growing danger to the South; and, 
since Northern cooperation has been shown, it will be seen that 
when this XoTthern party cooperated in the election of Lincoln, who 
had sworn allegiance to their doctrine, tlie national character of the 
danger became more imminent. 

The Xorthern people who furnished Sharp's rifles — "Beecher 
Bibles" — and mountain cannon declared that they "had also sent 
and ^vou]d continue to send men and means to make Kansas a free 
state by force, if TLecessary." On the scene of the conflict no secret 
was made of the fact that the conspirators were depending upon the 
North for both moral and material support. Such men as Eobin- 
son, Eeeder, Lane, Brown, and others, "captains of sedition," have 
made no secret Oif the fact that "by forming a free-State constitu- 
tion they could get the aid and sympathy of the North to help them 
enforce their provisional laws.""^ The Boston and other abolition 
capitalists built a large house in La^^Tence, providing it with port- 
holes for guns, ]>ecause they said they expected to come into collision 
with the Territorial authorities. Their leaders, such as G. W. 
Brown, Dr. Eobinson, Dr. CI. A. Cutter, C. W. Steward, and others, 
made boastful public speeches, in which they urged the organization 
of secret societies for resisting the authorities. "Abolitionists re- 
ceived their speeches with applause.""^ The fact that all of them 
made no excuse for marshaling military companies other than an 
intention to resist the laws enacted by the legislature which Gov- 
ernor Eeeder had convened pursuant to election of March 30, 1855, 
should be all the evidence needed to show that there was no real 
need for such belligerent preparations; all these guns and drilled 
companies were not needed, nor any considerable fraction of them, 
for purely legitimate protection of person and property. Yet writ- 
ers generally in treating of these things try to leave the impression 
that a hostile invasion from the "border ruffians" of Missouri, or 
some other section of the South, was both threatened and made. 
Legal officers, now and then accompanied by Missourians, — and a 
few individual exceptions which were not legal, — made efforts fre- 



"iMinority Report, Sp. Kan. Com., 1 sess., 34 Cong., 87. 
^"Report. Sp. Kan. Com., 1 sess., 34 Cong., Evidence, 907. 



202 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

quently to execute the laws of the Territory. But whatever oc- 
curred in the nature of an "invasion" took place many months after 
the sedition and rebellion had been in actual armed progress. 
Neither these abolition rebels, nor their Northern allies, appealed to 
the United States soldiery for protection, as they had a right to do 
if such protection were needed, — except in a way and under assumed 
authority such that the request itself was a defiance to the very act 
of Congress which yet made Kansas a Territory. For instance, Sep- 
tember 3, 1856, H. Miles Moore, who claimed to be acting for the 
Kansas State Central Committee, requested the officers in command 
of United States troops in Kansas to lend them specified assistance. 
In his report of September 5th, Adj. -Gen. Deas said, with refer- 
ence to this appeal: "The State of Kansas is not recognized by any 
portion of the general government, and the commanding general 
could, therefore, hold no official correspondence with Mr. Moore in 
his assumed position, or office, as indicated in his communica- 
tion.'""" From the first and for years following they requested and 
received money, men, and guns from the jSTorth, not for protection, 
but to resist what they were pleased to call the "bogus" legislature, 
and the acts of the Territorial officers, in an effort to sustain the 
Topeka government and the "State of Kansas." And not against 
the Territorial laws and officers only; they were in rebellion against 
the United States, — its President and laws and soldiery. 

September 5, 1855, pursuant to a call from the leaders, and after 
a thorough canvass of the Territory, the insurrectionists met in 
convention at Big Springs. A Northern man introduced the fol- 
lowing resolution : 

"Eesolved, That every reliable Free-State man in this Terri- 
tory be furnished with a rifle, a brace of pistols, and a sabre, 
gratis ; [I am sure it was a mere oversight that the bowie-knife was 
not added; and as to the feathers for the head, it is likely they 
meant to obtain these from scalps obtained from "Missouri ruf- 
fians"] and that he be required to take an oath to come when called 
upon, and muster into service under his superior officer, and to 
sacrifice his life if necessary, to secure the person and property of 
any person who would be brought under the jurisdiction of the pres- 
ent laws of this Territory." 



«3Sen. Docs., 3 sess., 34 Cong., Vol. III., No. 5, 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 203 

Armed by the JSToTth, encouraged by the JSTorth, here on the Kan- 
sas plains is a declaration of war. It is open rebellion against Ter- 
ritorial and Federal authority. The Governor, Mr. Shannon, Gov- 
ernor Eeeder's successor, was an officer of the United States, ap- 
pointed by the President. He was charged with the execution of 
the Territorial laws; this "open and avowed renunciation of the 
government" to which all owed allegiance was rebellion against the 
Federal authority. Even if it had been possible to resist the Ter- 
ritorial laws without resisting the Federal laws and officers at the 
same time, this led to resistance and to open contact with the Fed- 
eral government. The whole aflfair was a vicious move, with the 
abolition sympathy of the North behind it. If other events had not 
hastened the withdrawal of Southern Senators and Eepresentatives 
from Congress in 18G0-"62, thus leading the Eepublican party of 
the North, the immediate successors of the abolitionists (most cer- 
tainly the successors of the free-State abolitionists) in control of 
the national legislature — owing partly to which fact Kansas became 
a member of the Union with what is known as the Wyandotte Con- 
stitution, — the North would have been the secessionists. Other- 
wise we must believe that hundreds of resolutions like the one at 
Pittsfield, Mass., in 1854, and the one offered in Congress in June, 
1842, by the venerable J. Q. Adams, were but the meaningless prat- 
tle of little children. 

To return to the Big Springs' convention. Loud cheers and hur- 
rahs greeted the resolution. Dr. C. Eobinson, whom his party made 
governor as soon as the excitement of the Civil War diverted the 
attention of the South, was the presiding officer. "Ex-Governor 
A. H. Eeeder urged the people to bloodshed and rebellion, while 
they listened to him as though he were one of the prophets and pa- 
triarchs of old." Throughout the Territory leading abolitionists 
"openly boasted that they had helped to run off negroes from the 
South into Canada, and hoped the day was near at hand when they 
would succeed in all their designs, and settle those gentlemen of 
color along the shores of Kansas, where they could make war on the 
institutions of the South, particularly of Missouri. . , . Such are 
the principles of those who keep Kansas in a state of rebellion, and 
such are the men who are the leaders of the leaders of the aboli- 
tionists — leading them on to thievery, treason, and death."*** 



♦"R. Com., 34 Cong., 1 sess., Minority Report, 91. 



204 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

The organization of the sedition forces was thorough. Through- 
out the Territory, where they could be gathered, companies were 
drilled, and secret societies, such as the "Kansas Eegulators," 
flourished. The secret political organizations used as a badge one 
or more "black ribbons tied in the shirt bosom." Reeder, Lane, 
Eobinson, and other prominent leaders, wore this badge conspicu- 
ously. The following is the "grand obligation" which was solemnly 
administered to members : 

"I, . . ., of my own free-will and accord, in the presence of Al- 
mighty God and these witnesses, do solemnly s\\'ear that I will al- 
ways hail, forever conceal, and never reveal any of the secrets of 
this organization to any person in the known world, except it be 
to a member of the order, or within the body of a just and legal 
council. I furthermore promise and swear, that I will not write, 
print, stain, or indite on anything movable or immovable, whereby 
the least figure or character may become intelligible to myself or 
any other person. 1 furthermore promise and swear, that I will at 
all times and under all circumstances, hold myself in readiness to 
obey, even to death, the orders of my superior officers. ... I fur- 
thermore promise and swear, that all business that I may transact, 
so far as is in my power, shall be transacted with free-State men. 
I furthermore promise and swear, that I will at all times and under 
all circumstances, hold myself in readin-ess to take up arms in de- 
fence of free^State principles, even though it should subvert the 
government. I furthermore promise and swear, that I will at all 
times and under all circumstances, wear upon my person the re- 
galia of my office and the insignia. ... I furthermore swear, that 
I will at all times and under all circumstances, wear upon my per- 
son a weapon of death. I furthermore promise and swear, that I will 
at all times and under all circumstances, keep in my house at least 
one gun, with a full supply of ammunition. I furthermore promise 
and swear, that I will at all times and under all circumstances, when I 
see the sign of distress given, rush to the assistance of the person 
giving it, even when there is a greater probability of saving his life 
than of losing my own. I furthermore promise and swear, that I 
will, to the utmost of my power, oppose the laws of the so-called 
Kansas legislature. I furthermore promise and swear, that when I 
hear the danger signal given, I will repair to the place where the 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 205 

danger is. I fiirtherniore promise and swear, that if any part of 
this ohligation is at this time omitted, I will consider the same as 
binding when legally informed of it. I furthermore promise and 
swear, that at the convenient opportunity, I will commit this obli- 
gation to memory. To all this I solemnly swear, without equivo- 
cation or self-evasion, binding myself under the penalty of being 
declared a perjurer before Heaven and a traitor to my country." 

Signs, grips, and pass-words were u'sed.'"' In connection with 
this it is interesting as showing that the seditionists meant to. stop 
short of nothing, to note the declaration of a prominent leader, who 
declared that "... if need be we will resist even the United States 
troops if they attempt to enforce those laws.""" By "those laws" 
he meant the laws of the Territory as enacted by the legislature of 
March 30th. 

There is some evidence tending to contradict the exact wording 
of the above oath. But shortly after knowledge of it was obtained 
by the witness who gave it to the country and to the Congressional 
committee, March 29, 1856, he went before a grand jury and di- 
vulged the whole affair, and gave the names of those present, who 
aided, etc., when he first heard the oath administered."' Those men 
were summoned before the jury, but they either entirely refused to 
speak on the point or evaded the questions asked them. However, 
in his deposition. Governor Eeeder practically corroborates the 
wording as I have given it, thus leaving no doubt of its substantial 
correctness, most likely establishing its literal accuracy. 

The plight in which the ex-governor exhibits himself during his 
deposition is almost pitiful. He says he had known the name of the 
society who administered this "grand obligation," but that he had 
forgotten it! He also states, "As to the laws of the so-called Kan- 
sas legislature, that any pledge was made in regard to them, it is 
possible that there may have been a pledge to oppose, disavow, or 
repudiate them as not binding, and not to avail myself of them, and 
such a promise I may have made and forgotten.""' A bolder attempt 
to evade the truth is scarcely to be; found in our history. In more 
than one place he contradicts former statements. Yet upon this 

«5See Evidence, 910. ^ 

*"Evidence, 915. 

«^Kan. Historical Cols., Vol. I., 411-12-13 ; Minority Rept., 91 et sea 
*2'Evidence, 947. 



206 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

man's story prominent historians basQ their version of the early 
elections and the part taken therein by Missourians, Hear Mr. 
Ehodes on this point: "There could be no dispute about the facts. 
Eeeder came East and told the story.""" 

This is the same man who, as governor in his message of July 3, 
1855, to this same legislature whose laws he later took this oath to 
spurn and resist, said, "Claiming as we do the same capacity for 
self-government as our fellow-citizens of the States, with a far 
greater, if not an exclusive interest in the institutions and laws 
which are to exist among us ; compelled alone to bear their burdens, 
and entitled alone to claim their benefits, wisdom, justice, and fair- 
ness, would declare that those laws and institutions, inside of the 
Constitution of the United States, should be moulded by ourselves, 
stimulated by the absorbing interest we must feel in them, rather 
than by the citizens or representatives of other states, who are no 
more competent to the task than we, who have no stake with us in 
their results, and who would most indignantly repel .any offer of 
reciprocity from us in assisting to manage their affairs. The pro- 
visions of our territorial organic act secure us this right, and is 
founded in the true doctrine of republicanism." And a little fur- 
ther on : "An agitation of" "the slavery question in the direction of 
an attack upon constitutional rights," "such as we have seen indus- 
triously prosecuted in the past history of our country by the de- 
structive spirit of abolitionism, can never be productive of aught 
but evil, . . . and is calculated to endanger the existence of our 
cherished Union. A want of fidelity to the solemn compacts of the 
Constitution, and an attack upon the rights of the states which are 
governed by it, can have no justification or excuse.""" 

On November 28, 1855, Governor Wilson Shannon tra,nsmitted 
a lengthy document to President Pierce, setting out fully the state 
of affairs in Kansas. Among other things lie said. "Affaii-s in this 
Territory are daily assuming a shape of real danger to the peace 
and good order of society. I am well satisfied that there exists in 
this Territory a secret military organization which has for its object, 
among other things, resistance to the laws by force. 

"Until within a few days past I have looked upon the threats of 

"•History U. S. (Harper Bros.. '93), VoL II., p. 83. 
"05 Kan. Historical Cols., 193. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 207 

leading men and public papers who have placed themselves in an 
attitude of resistance to the laws, as not intended by those who made 
them to be carried into execution. I am now satisfied of the exist- 
ence of this secret military organization, and that those engaged in 
it have been secretly supplied with arms and munitions of war, and 
that it is the object and purpose of this organization to resist the 
la.ws by force." 

On November 31, 1855, Dow was killed by Coleman. As I have 
already shown, mien armed with Sharp's rifles resisted the officers 
who attempted to execute the laws after that affair, and concerning 
this matter the governor says, "In the settleme/it in which these 
transactions took place there were from sixteen to twenty law and 
order families, and about one hundred free-soil families. At the 
last advices three of the houses of the former [who were the South- 
ern families] had been burnt down by this armed band. Cattle had 
been killed, and a considerable amount of corn and other personal 
property destroyed, and the whole law and order population of that 
neighborhood, induced by terror, had fled, except two families, whose 
lives were threatened. Helpless women and children have been 
forced by fear and threats to flee from their homes." 

It will be remembered that Governor Shannon had not alone these 
acts of small bodies of armed men upon which to base his conclu- 
sions, but that he had the expression of almost the entire abolition 
population gathered in a large and representative convention on 
August 14th and 15th prior to the above message. This convention 
had unanimously passed a resolution saying, among other things, 
that "the people of Kansas have been, since its settlement, and now 
are, without any law-making power," and that the people should 
meet for the formation of a "state constitution." There was then 
a call out, issued by the leading Northern sympathizers, for the 
famous Topeka convention, and this call was endorsed by the con- 
vention of 14th and 15th. After extensive advertising, another 
large convention of the insurrectionists met at Big Springs Septem- 
ber 5th, — which I have already mentioned. This gathering passed 
some daring resolutions, and renewed their repudiation of the legis- 
lature and all laws passed by it. They said, "We owe no allegiance 
or obedience to the enactments of the spurious legislature . . . every 
man is at liberty to resist them ... we will endure and submit to 



208 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

these laws no longer . . . and will resist them to a bloody issue . . . 
we recommend the organization and discipline of volunteer compa- 
nies, and the procurement and preparation of arms,'"" But arms 
had already been procured. I have called attention to the fact that 
about the 1st of April prior to these conventions, Major Abbott had 
arrived in Kansas with the first instalment of Sharp's rifles,"" and 
that on August 20th of this same year Mr. Lawrence had written 
concerning another supply of guns, "This instalment of carbines is 
far from being enough. I hope the meaisures you are taking will be 
followed up until every organized company of trusty men in the 
Territory shall be supplied.""^ He had declared his readiness to 
furnish all that would be wanted, the -North had been canvassed, 
Thayer, "like a flaming meteor," had aroused the North, men had 
been furnished, money raised by popular subscription had been do- 
nated : the rebellion was well planned, lavishly aided, warmly en- 
couraged, and constantly supported by dangerous numbers through- 
out the length and breadth of the North. Organized co^mpanies, 
sworn secret organizations, abundant improved arms accompanied 
by all the needed munitions of war, open acts of violence, bloodshed, 
and sedition in Kansas, paved the way for the consummation and 
operations of the Topeka pseudo government. The most unquali- 
fied popular free-State aid was rendered the completion and sus- 
tenance of this rival government. Thus hostilities which had begun 
in the Branson rescue came rapidly with an ever-widening sweep. 



'"Wilder, Annals of Kan., 55. 

«2Supra. 183-4. 

*33Supra. 



X. 

CUMULATIVE EVIDENCE OF NORTHERN 

REBELLION. 

FURTHER LIGHT FROM OFFICIAL RECORDS. 

From a study of Eobinson's, Thayer's, Springes, and many similar 
writers, respective histories, and the works of all who may be called 
contemporaries with the events under consideration who' have writ- 
ten from a Northern standpoint, the student will readily see that an 
effort is constantly made to leave the impression that, no matter how 
greatly the Territorial legislature's laws were detested and spurned, 
the insurgents bowed loyally in recognition of the dignity and au- 
thority of the United States. Most of the books touching this pe- 
riod have been written in the light of later years. To tell the en- 
tire story is to criminate the North— a great body of the North, 
"rich New Englanders," to use Mr. Channing's words, for whose 
actions the North as a whole must be held accountable just as the 
North holds the South accountable for what a large and influential 
class of her people did. Eosser Johnson, an ex-TJnion officer, and 
among the most bitter of partizan writers, admits that "carloads 
of improved rifles, paid for by popular subscription, were sent to the 
Free-State settlers.""* Whatever resulted from this "popular" aid, 
the private abetment, the encouragement which State legislatures 
gave by legalizing organizations having the agitation of Kansas 
questions in view, make the North equally guilt}^ — "accessories be- 
fore the fact," to use a legal expression. So it was hoped by all who 
have* written having Northern prejudices that disloyalty to the 
Union, which the North professed to love with a devotion that death 
only could destroy, would either not be seen, or if seen, seen under 
the most favorable conditions. Nevertheless, rebellion is plainly writ- 
ten upon the pages of Kansas history; and it was a rebellion limited 
in scope and results simply because events forced the South to de- 

"*Short History of the Civil War, 23 
14 



210 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

clare the dissolution of the Union before the full fruition of the 
Northern scheme. 

Much stress lias been placed upon what is called the attack of 
Sheriff Jones upon Lawrence in the fall of 1855. We have seen that 
Lawrence was the stronghold of the rebellion. It had been forti- 
fied and well armed. Too many writers have left us to believe that 
this so-called attack was the work of marauding Missourians. Such 
is far from the truth. This affair grew out of the resistance which 
the insurgents had made to the officers who w^ere going about their 
duty in the enforcement of tlie laws of the Territory, and who had 
been elected at the election of March 30th, — the legality of which 
election I maintain has been fully established. As stated pre- 
viously, Do'W was killed November 21, 1855.''" In harmony with 
Northern writers generally, the distinguished Northern historian, 
Ehodes, concerning the state of affairs up to this time says, "Until 
now there had been no collision between the opposing forces ... in 
the main, the contests were of political expedients.""' Fully pre- 
pared, fully armed, and seconded by wealthy and influential men in 
the North, the seditionists took the first opportunity to carry into 
practice the declarations of their conventions, of their papers, of 
their speakers, and of their supporters and backers. It will be re- 
membered that the fight between Coleman and Dow grew out of a 
dispute over a land claim.*" Which of these was to blame cannot 
now be known, but that point has nothing to do with the -events to 
which it gave rise. It furnished the opportunity for which the 
Northern men sought. Coleman was in the hands of the officers and 
held for trial, but on the next day after the homicide a large indig- 
nation gathering of Northern men met at the scene of the homicide ; 
without waiting for the action of the civil authorities, tihey openly 
swore vengeance. This led to the issuing of the peace warrants 
sworn out by Harrison Buckley, one of the men whose life this 
riotous gathering had threatened, and whose private dwelling, to- 
gether with that of prisoner Coleman, was in the night time fired 
and burned. Five days after the shooting of Dow, Branson, one of 
the rioting party, was arrested imder the process held by the offi- 



«'Kan. Historical Cols., Vol. V., 242, supra. 

"•History U. S., Vol. II., 103. 

«"Repts. Corns., 2 sess., 36 Cong., No. 104, Vol. III., pt. 1, p. 14. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 211 

cers. J. B. Abbott, who previously to that time had gone North ajid 
returned to Kansas with a large supply of Sharp's rifles and other 
war material, and S. F. Tappan, who was the clerk of the "so-called 
Topeka State Grovernment," led twelve or fifteen men from Law- 
rence and vicinity, armed with Sharp's rifles and other guns, and 
intercepted the sheriff and his prisoner. By intimidation and show 
of force they compelled the officer to release his prisoner."' Writs 
were issued for these Branson rescuers, who had retired under the 
protection of the organized forces in Lawrehce. Armed with these 
writs and imder orders from the Federal governor and accompanied 
by the militia. Sheriff Jones, who had held his commission from the 
governor since August previous,"' proceeded to Lawrence for the 
purpose of making tlie arrests. It was well known that the Law- 
rence people were defiant, well armed, and threatening. The town 
was known to be the military headquarters of the insurgents. Eob- 
inson had by them been elevated to ttie rank of "Major-General" of 
the insurrectionary forces."" Both he and "Colonel" Lane had 
headquarters there. These facts led the sheriff to take a large force. 
Among those who went with him were a number of men either re- 
cently from or yet living in Missouri. While it was entirely legal 
for the Missourians to go, since a Territory, as was Kansas, being 
under the peculiar jurisdiction of the United States, may secure 
citizens from any State to enforce Territorial laws and regula- 
tions,**^ yet the fact that Missourians were in the crowd gives the 
untenable ground for the claim that this was a "Missouri raid." 
Let tJie official records give us the correct version of the part taken 
by Missourians in this affair. On December 11, shortly after the 
"raid" or "battle," Governor Shannon, in an official report to Presi- 
dent Pierce, says, "... Indeed, the militia of the Territory being 
wholly unorganized, no force could be obtained except those who 
voluntarily tendered their aid to the sheriff, or to Generals Eichard- 
son and Strickler. The whole force in the Territory thus obtained 
did not amount to more than three or four hundred men, badly 
armed, and wholly unprepared to reisist the force at Lawrence, which 



^^^In the government document containing one of the reports of the Kansas 
affairs, 36 Cong., there is a misprint in Abbott's initial. 
«»Kan. Historical Cols., Vol. V., 281. 
^"'Spring, History Kan., 33. 
««Ib., 255. 



212 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

amounted at that time to some six hundred men, all remarkably 
well armed with Sharp's rifles and other weapons. These facts be- 
coming known across the line in the State of Missouri, large num- 
bers of men from that State, in irregular bodies, rushed to the 
county of Douglas, and many of them enrolled themselves in tlie 
sheriff's posse. ... I found Generals Eichardson and Strickler had 
very judiciously adopted the policy of incorporating into their re- 
spective commands all the irregular forces that had arrived. This 
was done with a view to subject them to militar}^ orders and disci- 
pline, and to prevent any unlawful acts or outbreaks. The great 
danger to be apprehended was from an unauthorized attack on the 
town of Lawrence, which was being strongly fortified and had about 
one thousand and fifty men, well armed, to defend it, with two pieces 
of artillery. While on the other side, there were probably in all near 
two thousand men, many of them indifferently armed, but having 
a strong park of artillery. I found in the camp at Wakarusa a deep 
and settled feeling of hostility against the opposing forces in Law- 
rence, and apparently a fixed determination to attack that pkice and 
demolish it and the presses, and take possession of their arras. It 
seemed to be a universal opinion in camp that there was no safety 
for the law and order party in the Territory while. the other party 
were permitted to retain their Sharp's rifles, an instrument used 
only for war purposes.""* The forces within the limits of the town 
showed the muzzles of their guns and held off the sheriff's party 
with shot and shell. After much ineffectual firing between the 
pickets of the two parties, the strongly fortified position, the im- 
proved guns — two hundred of the insurgents being armed with 
Sharp's rifles,**' the commanding position of the N'orthern cannon, 
and "the five small forts" which commanded the approaches of the 
town, and within the lines of which six hundred men "drilled in- 
ces:santly,""' induced Sheriff Jones and the militia officers. Generals 
Eichardson and Strickler, associated with him, to allow Governor 
Shannon to enter Lawrence and call a meeting of the leading in- 
Burrectionists in an effort at pacification in whatever way the pres- 
ervation of peace and the prevention of extensive bloodshed, might 



*^Sen. Does., 3 sess., 34 Cong., VoL II., 64. 

"'Spring, History Kans., 92. 

*"Ib. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 213 

be' found to comport with a due enforcement of civil law. The so- 
lution the governor thought he had found."' He so reported to the 
militia and those who had come from Missouri, whereupon they 
quietly retired.'^ In conclusion of the negotiations, a "treaty" was 
made in which the authorities in co.mniand at Lawrence, Dr. Eob- 
inson being conspicuous, declared "that we have no knowledge of 
the previous, present, or prospective existence of any organization 
in said Territory for resistance of the laws"; they then pledged 
themselves to aid in the enforcement of the law when called upon 
by the "proper authority in the town or vicinity of Lawrence.""' 
February 14, 1856, Dr. Eobinson wrote to the editor of the Herald 
of Freedom: "He [Governor Shannon at time mentioned above] 
was told plainly, as were the parties at Franldin, that the people of 
Lawrence, and the Territory generally, repudiated the Territorial 
legislature and its acte, but there was no organized opposition to 
them, every man acting as he thought best.""' That the beleaguered 
insurrectionists resorted to subterfuge, — played the governor "a 
cute Yankee trick," as one of them expressed it to G. D. Brewerton, 
of the iN'ew York Herald, December, '55, which gave time for the 
fugitives to escape,"' and that this statement of Eobinson and simi- 
lar declarations that there was "no organized opposition," made to 
Shannon and in the "treaty" with him, were the most gigantic mis- 
statements, the facts herein already given and those to follow leave 
not the slightest doubt. However, as news of the result of tliis first 
open conflict spread in the North, it was taken as a free-State vic- 
tory ; and Mr. Ehodes adds, "and the N"orth learned that there was 
a resolute part)^ in Kansas determined to make a fight for a free- 
State."^'" Just six days before the Branson rescue. Governor Shan- 
non, a Federal officer, had issued an official proclamation calling 
upon all citizens to aid Sheriff Jones in serving his writs and in 
otherwise enforcing the laws enacted by the legislature. The Bran- 
son rescue and the resistance at Lawrence were in direct disregard 
of this Federal proclamation, no less than violations of the local 
Territorial laws. 



**5Repts. of Corns., 36 Cong., 2 sess.. Vol. III., 934-931 

"»Ib. 

«'5 Kans. Hist. Cols., 246. 

««5 Kans. Hist. Cols., 249. 

"^The War in Kan. (1856), 60. 

«»History U. S., Vol. II., 106. 



214 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

In additioii to what has been herein given, from two sources we 
have other evidence of organized oj^position to the laws and Territo- 
rial governmenti — an organized opposition begun and aided in the 
North and carried out in Kansas : (1) In 1858, or '59, an effort was 
made to induce Kansas, an effort which was afterward applied to the 
Government of the United. States, to reimburse the losses sustained 
from the time of the Branson rescue up to the time of the effort for 
reimbursement. Evidence was taken ex parte, and generally it is 
that given by the Northern paxty. Now and then in the printed 
pages we find a Southern adherent asking a reimbursement for some 
damage, but such is rather the exception. This evidence Avas gath- 
ered by three commissioners appointed by Kansas for the purpose 
of auditing the claims, and was printed with a Congressional com- 
mittee repoTt, when the matter was before Congress, in Reports of 
Committees, Thirty-sixth Congress, second session, volume 3. Its 
early date, and the fact that we have the sworn statements of many 
of the leading rebels, make it a source of valuable evidence cumula- 
tive to that already given. (2) Another valuable source, bearing 
upon the events under consideratioin, is the official reporte of the 
United States Army officers who served in various positions in Kan- 
sas from its Territorial creation to the close of 1860. 

From the evidence in the claims cases we have very positive state- 
ments of the war footing which began early in 1855 and which first 
came to open resistance in the Branson rescue. For instance, in a 
sworn deposition given May 29, 1859, the prominent insurrectionary 
leader, Jas. H. Lane, says that from November, 1855, "the condi- 
tion of affairs was an actual state of war." "Opposing armies were 
in the field during that war — ^the free-State men had in the field, 
at the same time, 800 or 1,000 men, concentrated at Lawrence, and 
there fortified with wood and timber and earth breastworks, seven 
in number. . . . The main army," he continues, "was kept in the 
field from the latter part of November till the middle of Decem- 
ber, 1855, wh©a the main body was disbanded, retaining, however, 
in actual service a sufficient number of companies to serve a nucleus 
(being regularly drilled), to man the fortifications and prevent 
surprise. These companies were thus retained in service at Law- 
rence until April, 1856."*" But the disbandment was by no means 



'Repts. Corns., 2 sess., 36 Cong., Vol. III., 945. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 215 

the conclusioin. From the very first, "foraging parties brought in 
cattle" for the Lawrence "army.""" Lawrence was put und^er mar- 
tial law/" and from November, 1855, on, so Dr. Chas. Kohinson 
states in one deposition before the claims committee, no man would 
have been permitted to have removed his goods, provisions, or sup- 
plies, "as it was important to maintain an appearance of confidence 
and stability."^"* These troops of the rebellion quartered and fed 
upon private individuals without their consent and without paying 
for what was obtained. In one case one hundred persons daily fed 
upon one young woman until they broke her health and ruined her 
business.*" They paid lier nothing and fed against her will. The 
rebel leaders. Dr. C. Eobinson and Gf-. W. Deitzler, stated on oath 
that "she was reduced from comparative comfort to almost desti- 
tution.''^^" 

Following these events, January 24, 1856, President Pierce offi- 
cially endorsed the legislature elected by the Southern people resi- 
dent in Kansas, which historians generally call the Lecompton leg- 
islature. Also, he officially declared the government w^hich the in- 
surgent abolitionists attempted to set up, revolutionary and an act 
of rebellion.*'^ From this recognition of the Lecompton Territorial 
government by the chief executive of the United States on to the 
close of hostilities, all repudiation or armed resistance was un- 
doubted rebellion, — not alone against the Territorial laws and au- 
thority, but against the lawful authority of the United States. 
The highest authority in the land before whom the question had 
come. Congress and the President of the United States, declared 
the laws of the recognized Kansas Territorial Igi'slature legal, valid, 
binding; and the oflficial proclamation that all resistance was re- 
bellion, was enforced by the Secretary of War,*'^ and that entirely 
irrespective of party or section."' Did Eobinson. Abbott, Lane, 
Eeeder, Lawrence, and their many hundreds of co-conspirators, de- 
sist? Did the North bow loyally to the United States Government? 



*^nb., 947. 

«3ib., 934. 

«*Ib.. 943. 

«=Ib., 342. 

«6ib., 344. 

«'Wilder's Annals of Ran., 90 : Kan. Hist. Cols., Vol. V., 253, 236, 259, 2€ 

*5SKan. Historical Cols., Vol. V., 260. 

«3Sen. Docs., 3d sess., 34 Cong., 49, 50. 



216 



NOETHEKN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 



Did she hear the command of the chief of the armies of the Union? 
Did the thousands in the IS^orth withdraw their support and com- 
fort? The very reverse is true; Northen clamor grew louder and 
the active rebels grew bolder. On the second of the following Feb- 
ruary, the "New York Tribune declared that the duty of the peo- 
ple of the free-States is to send more true men, more Sharp's rifles, 
more field pieces, and howitzers to Kansas." Similar sentiments 
were echoed all over the North."" Says Mr. Ehodes, "Public meet- 
ings in aid of Kansas were held all over the free States, and com- 
mittees to collect money and use it properly were appointed."'" 

On the 11th of February of the same year and within a few days 
of that time; proclamations were issued respectively by the Presi- 
dent of the United States and by the governor of Kansas, both of 
which declared that the assembling of the Topeka legislature "would 
constitute the fact of insurrection" ; and those who claimed to con- 
stitute that body were forbidden "fro-m assembling, organizing, or 
attempting to organize, or act in any legislative capacity whatso- 
ever.'""' March 26th, following, Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, 
directed Col. Sumner, commanding United States troops in Kan- 
sas, to repress lawlessness of every character, and "to make no dis- 
crimination, founded on the section or country from which persons 
might or had come." This order was again emphasized by him from 
the War Department August 27, 1856.'^ 

On April 11, 1856, the governor of the Territory officially an- 
nounced that, "The charges made in some of the public papers, and 
in other quarters, that there exists an armed organization in Mis- 
souri for the purpose of making an aggressive movement into this 
Territory, never had any foundation in truth to rest upon."*" As 
in the past, so from now on as the movements of all parties are 
given u's by the army officers through their various official reports 
and correspondence, the truth of this statement of the governor will 
be evident because (1) no important party or number of Mis- 
sourians were ever armed for aggression; (2) except the fewest 
cases of wholly irresponsible and small parties, to be noticed later. 



««oRhodes, History U. S., Vol. II., 152. 

*MIb., 1.53. 

*82Sen. Docs., 3d sess., 34 Cong., Vol. III., No. 5, p. 58. 

«<»Ib., 60. 

*"Sen. Docs., 3d sess., 34 Cong., Vol. II., p. 67. 



NORTHEKN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 217 

those who came from Missouri or other Southern localities, always 
retired quietly and without molesting others, when they understood 
that the laws would be respected, or their friends and relatives left 
unharmed ; ( 3 ) they made no organized movement except such as 
conformed to the orders of lawful Territorial officers. 

In the absence of the governor, the secretary, Daniel Woodson, 
was the acting governor. In an official communication to him. Col. 
E. V. Sumner, commanding the first United States cavalry, June 
28, 1856, said, "I have sent Major Sedgwick with two companies tO' 
Topeka to prevent the assembling of tlie so-called Topeka legisla,- 
ture. I am decidedly of opinion that that body of men ought not 
to be permitted to assemble. It is not too much to say that the 
peace of the country depends upon it. In this affair it is proper 
that the civil authorities should take the lead, and I would respect- 
fully suggest whether it would not be better (if you find they are 
bent on meeting) to have a justice of the peace and a marshal in 
person join Major Sedg^vack, and have writs drawn and served on 
them the moment they get together. ... If you tliink there is a 
possibility of having any difficulty in carrying out this measure, I 
will thank you to apprise me of it in time for me to get there; for 
it is right that I should take all responsibility whenever we have to 
use force.""' On the 30th of June the officers commanding United 
States forces Teported Lane "with a very large force" of Northern 
men moving to Topeka for the avowed purpose of protecting their 
legislature."" On the 3d of July Oen. Smith reported that, "The 
persons chosen under the new constitution as members of the legis- 
lature of the 'State of Kansas.' were adjourned to meet on the 4th 
of July."*" This meeting of itself, under both the President's and 
the governor's proclamation, was rebellion — and rebellion supported 
and protected by armed force. 

Pursuant to adjournment, on the morning of July 4th the mem- 
bers of the seditious "Kansas State^' legislature gathered at To- 
peka. Col. E. V. Sumner had a United States marshal read in the 
hearing of all the people the proclamations of the President and of 
the governor, both of which forebade the assembling or the attempt 
to assemble of the Topeka legislature, and declared that any one of 



«'Sen. Docs., 3d sess., 34 Cong.. Vol. III., 53- 
• ""Ib., 55. 
*"Ib., 56. 



218 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

such act would constitute sedition and rebellion. In his report to 
Col. S. Cooper, adj.-gen. TJ. S. A., Col. Sunmer says, "A part of 
the members complied with them, and did not assemble ; but a num- 
ber of both house.s determined to meet at all hazards, and I was 
obliged to march my command into the town and draw up in front 
of the building in which the legislature was to meet."'"'^ He then 
went in and dispersed both branches. In another report Col. Sum- 
ner also said, "The free-State legislature of Kansas, elected and or- 
ganized without law, was considered by the governor and myself as 
'insurrectionary,' and under the President's proclamation of Feb- 
ruary last, we felt bound to suppress it. If it had been suffered to 
go on it must have led tO' the most serious consequences. Even if 
they had not attempted to put their laws in force, the very enact- 
ment of them, togethei" with the other proceedings of an organized 
legislature, would have encouraged the free-State party in still more 
decided resistance to the laws which the President had decided must 
be maintained. Under the circumstances I felt it to be my duty to 
maintain the proclamation of acting Governor Woodson. The mar- 
shal was sent into Topeka to read this proclamation, and also the 
President's, and I had previously informed the people that I was 
very anxious that they should comply with them and not compel me 
to display force on the occasion. When the marshal returned to my 
camp he reported to me that the legislature would assemble in de- 
fiance of the proclamations. I knew that there was a large body of 
men there to sustain this act." 

Gen. P. F. Smith succeeded Col. Sumner to the command of the 
United States Army, department of the West. On July 14th in an 
official communication he said that the funds furnished "from with- 
out" kept lawless bands spread over the "country robbing, and even 
murdering."*''" He continues, "On the 28th of June, at Iowa City, 
Col. Lane raised $2,000 by subscription, and had about two hun- 
dred and fifty men, whom he said would march, with a large rein- 
forcement from Chicago, across Iowa to Council Bluffs."*^" Shortly 
afterward Lane and his reinforcements arrived and began to resist 
legal officers and to pillage and to murder. 

Northern papers kept busy declaring that the free-State people 



«'Sen. Docs.. 3d sess., 34 Cong., VoL III., 57. 

*«9Ib., 65. 

«»Ib., 58, et seq. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 219 

in Kansas had petitioned the officers commanding United States 
troops for protection. In an official communication Gen. Smith re- 
ferred to these reports and denounced them as "gross fabrications," 
and said "there is no foundation for any of them."*" 

It is interesting to note that General Smith wag born in Pennsyl- 
vania. He was distinguished, in the words of General Winfield 
Scott, in our war with ]\Iexico as a brave, able, "cool, unembar- 
rassed, and ready" soldier. He died in Kansas in 1858. 

I can pause to notice but a few of the open acts of violence per- 
petrated, a;s shown by these army official reports, by the organized 
rebels. Several times previous to the middle of August, 1856, they 
had attacked and fought the United States troops while in the dis- 
charge of Federal duty.'" Those who so desire may consult the 
original records for the numerous details. I mention a few more of 
the more noted of their deeds of bloody violence. On August 17th 
Major Sedgwick reported 800 armed rebels in LaAvrence."'" He re- 
ports that the free-State rebels, near the same date, attacked the 
town of Lecompton. With a six-pounder they destroyed the home 
of Col. Titus, killed one man, woimded Titus, and secured him and 
other prisoners. 

This is the same Major Sedg^vick, who became the Union general 
of Gett^Tsburg fame, and who lost his life at Spottsylvania C. H., 
May 9, 1864. He was a native of Connecticut. 

Xor were their depredations confined to killing and robbing only 
Southern men and such as sympathized with the Southern position. 
Many of their own party were forced to support the army. Con- 
gress was afterward asked, as I stated above, to pay for the dam- 
ages committed by the various companies and bands who scattered 
desolation and ruin in the name of a "free-State where white men 
only may not come in competition with the negro, free or slave," 
in almost every settlement of the Territory. Turning again to the 
volume containing the evidence gathered by the committee who^ were 
assigned to audit these claims, we find a' free-State man swears "that 
about the last of August, 1856, a company of ragamuftms, under 
the command of General Lane," destroyed his com, burned his 



*"Ib., 


67. 


*-nb.. 


44. 


"Hh., 


72. 



220 NOETHEEN EEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

house, and drove a peaceable pro-slavery neighbor from home/'' An- 
other witness swore that in this same month this same Jas. H. Lane 
and his men "armed with Sharp's rifles, Colt's pistols, bowie-knives, 
and other deadly weapons," committed bold robbery/" (If tlie 
reader will turn back to the description given by a Northern writer, 
and quoted above, which he meant to apply to a "Missouri ruffian," 
he will surely a^gree with me that that writer mistook one of his own 
connti-ymen armed by prominent Northern ministers of the Gospel 
and other substantial citizens, as that "soldier" moved out to mur- 
der and wanton rapine in the name of the "free-State of Kansas.") 

On August 29th, Gen. P. F. Smith, "reporting to the adjutant- 
general of the U. S. A., after speaking of the recrnits brought in 
by Lane, and of the numerous reports that these men under Lane's 
leadership were "engaged in robbing, murdering, and driving ont 
of the Territory all those who were of a different opinion from them- 
selves," adds that expeditionis, inspired by these reports and rumors, 
seem to be preparing on all hands to enter the Territory and avenge 
the wrongs inflicted on Southerners and their friends. "Exag- 
gerated and false as many of these rumors have been," he continues, 
"there is some truth in the foundation of them. A large number of 
men brought by Lane from the East have entered Kansas in small 
parties, and with their arms concealed. They arrived mostly at 
Lawrence, where they completed their organization. They robbed 
all the country within their reach of the horses, and finally attacked 
the house of the postmaster at Franklin, probably with a view of 
getting possession of some arms issued to the militia, and deposited 
there. They wounded some and made prisoners of others defending 
the house, and set fire to it, having robbed the postoffice." After de- 
tailing other depredations, he adds, "I do not think it was proper 
to prevent citizens from the neighboring border of Missouri coming 
over to aid and protect their relatives and friends from the outrages 
offered by the parties from Lawrence and Topeka.""* 

Sept. 23d, General Smith's report was considered at the War 
Department by Secretary Jefferson Davis, who endorsed : "The only 
distinction of parties which, in a military point of view, it is neces- 



«"Repts. Corns., 2 sess., 36 Cong., Vol. III., pt. 1, 919, 923, 924. 

♦"lb., 775. ^ 

«"Sen. Docs., 3d sess., 34 Cong., No. 5, p. 78. 



NORTHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. S21 

sary to note, is that which distinguishes those who respect and main- 
tain tlie laws and organized government from those who combine 
for revolutionary resistance to the constituted authorities and laws 
of the land. The armed combination of the latter class come within 
the denunciation of the President's proclamation, and are proper 
subjects upon which to employ military force.'"'^ 

In the latter part of August, John W. Geary succeeded to the 
Governorship of Kansas Territory. Sept. 11, 1856, he disbanded 
the militia,*'* amd delivered a strong address to the people."' Ee- 
porting to the adjutant-general. Col. S. Cooper, General Persifor 
F. Smith said, "The good sense and respect for law which has been 
evinced by companies from Missouri has made the prompt and ener- 
getic action of Governor Gearj entirely successful, and the road is 
now clear for our operations (already begun), without waiting for 
or requiring the presence of other troops." 

But these sanguine views were not speedily to be fulfilled. On 
Sept. 15, 1856, so sickening had become the outrages committed by 
companies fitted out from Lawrence, that General Atchinson, ex- 
vice-President of the United States, and General Eeed, organized 
a large force in Missouri, crossed the border, gathered what Kansas 
militia they could, and moved to attack and destroy Lawrence. 
They came "with banners flying," "uniformed and well ■ armed," 
twenty-five hundred men, horse and foot, and had "a strong six- 
poimd battery." Governor Geary and Lieut.-Col. Cooke, the latter 
in command of United States troops watching the Lawrence insur- 
rectionists as well as the movements of all parties, went out to meet 
this coming army. They demanded that the Missouxians retire and 
that all go home. Speeches by both sides were ma^e, and Col. Cooke 
and the governor assured all parties that they would enforce law 
and stop outrages. In his report the colonel says, "Authority pre- 
vailed, and the militia honorably submitted to march off to be dis- 
banded at their place of rendezvous." And that Missourians and 
all did return home is shown by what he says later in the same re- 
port: "Lieut-Col. Johnston returned at 4 P. M., and reports that 
the main body of the militia, or Missourians, having passed the 



«"Ib., 


83. 


«»Ib., 


119. 


«»Ib., 


116. 



222 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Wakarusa six miles beyond Lawrence yesterday evening, were no- 
where to be seen b}- the patrols this morning at that or another 
point above."*"" 

This report was made to Major F. J. Porter, under whose super- 
vision all these movements at that time came. Major Porter was a 
native of New Hampshire. He was the S'On of Capt. John Porter, 
of the U. S. N., and nephew of Commodore David Porter, who com- 
manded the famous frigate Essex in 18 12-' 14. He was distin- 
guished in the war with Mexico, and was for two years on duty at 
West Point Military Academy. In the Union Army of the Civil 
War he attained the rank of brigadier-general. Except some trou- 
bles between himself and General Pope, his record was that of "a 
thoroughly capable, judicious, and brave soldier";*" while at no 
time was his loyalty to the Union cause ever questioned. As late as 
1886 he held civil office in New York City. 

Capt. Thos. J. Wood, afterwards brigadier-general, who 'served 
with distinction in the Union army throughout the Civil War, and 
who was regularly retired with the rank of brigadier in 1871, in 
an official report from his camp near Lecompton, Sept. 16, 1856, 
says : 

"... I leaxned at the ferry at Lecompton that a large band of 
marauders, commanded by a person named Harvey, and who is re- 
ported to hold the rank of colonel among the organized disturbers 
of the peace of the Territory, had marched from Lawrence the pre- 
vious night for the purpose of attacking some settlement or settle- 
ments in the district in which I had been ordered to afford protec- 
tion. . . . About an hour later the messenger who had been sent to 
Hickory Point returned, and reported that Harvey's party had at- 
tacked Hickory Point at 11 o'clock in the forenoon, and were prob- 
ably still somewhere in that vicinity, as the attack, from all the in- 
formation he had obtained, had been made by a force of some three 
hundred and fifty men, provided vsdth artillery and baggage wagolis. 
At 9 I moved toward Hickory Point, marching very rapidly. About 
11% o'clock I met an armed party, numbering about twenty-five 
men, on the road leading from Hickory Point to Lawrence. I 
halted them, and asked who they were, whither they had been, and 



*mb., 122. 

««The Nat. Cy. Am. Blog. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 223 

whither they were going. To these questions they replied that they 
were 'a part of Colonel Harvey's conimand ; that they were return- 
ing to Lawrence from Hickory Point, and they had been engaged in 
the attack that day on the latter place,' They were well armed with 
muskets and Sharp's carbines, and had with them three wagons, in 
one of which there M^as a man who had been woimded in the attack. 
The deputy marshal arrested them in the name of the United 
States, and required tliem to lay down their arms, which require- 
ment I enforced." He then moved on and surprised Harvey's camp 
"before there was time to make any preparations for resistance or 
escape." He continues : "I immediately rode into the camp accom- 
panied by the marshal. The men in camp acknowledge themselves 
to belong to Harvey's party, and that they had been engaged in the 
attack on Hickory Point, which fact was well attested by the pres- 
ence of several wounded men in the camp; and furthermore, they 
acknowledged that they had marched from Lawrence the previous 
night to make the attack. The marshal arrested all of them in the 
name of the United States, and required them to lay down their 
arms, which I enforced. They laid down their arms with consider- 
able hesitation, and would perhaps not have done so at all, but that 
they found themselves entirely surrounded by a force sufficient to 
enforce the marshal's orders. . . . The marauders were well armed 
with muskets, and Sharp's carbines, hunting rifles, revolving pis- 
tols, bowie-knives, etc., and had one piece of artillery, a four- 
pounder." Capt. Wood captured 101 men, and learned that those 
actually engaged in the attack had numbered about 200 men, of 
whom about 150, from the best information that this officer could 
get, were from Topeka.**' He secured "47 Sharp's carbines, 38 mus- 
kets, 6 hunting rifles, 2 shotguns, 20 revolving pistols, 14 bowie- 
knives, 4 swords, and one piece of artillery, with a large supply of 
ammunition for all arms," and adds: "Doubtless many arms were 
thrown away by the marauders, as some of those brought in were 
picked up in the grass by my men."*"^ 

So determined were the anti-Southern party of the Forth to force 
upon the country a war, that it was only by the utmost vigilance 
that the regular army thwarted the design. Typical of the methods 



"2lb., 125. 

"^Sen. Docs., 3d sess., 34 Cong., No. 5, 126. 



224 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of suppression are such as tlie following: To Col. Cooke Gen. F. 
J. Porter, assistant adj.-gen., on Oct. 5, 1856, sent an order in which 
he directs a careful inspection of all emigrants, and orders '^by a 
careful examination to insure yourself that they form no part of 
organized armed bodies or Lane's men. Should they enter the Ter- 
ritory with cannon, or form any portion of Lane's command, you 
will not believe their professions, but take them prisoners and dis- 
arm them."^^ 

That these precautions were well taken, a glance back at the re- 
port of Col. Cooke to Maj. Porter of Sept. 20, 1856, will more than 
assui^e us. He says, "Lane attacked the assembled neighbors of 
6 oi/i. parties — assembled for protection at Hickory Point — on Sat- 
urday, demanding their surrender on pain of no quarter being 
shown to them. His proceedings were cowardly, and he sent to 
Lawrence for reinforcements; and on Sunday, he probably being 
gone, one hundred and fifty men from Lawrence, with a four- 
poiunder, fired on some fifty men and some women five hours. A 
dozen or more cannon balls struck the log houses. They killed one 
man, and are all guilty of murder.""' 

Turn once more to the civil side of this rebellion. Organization 
much more complete than that of numerous revolutions which in 
the end have succeeded, marked the thoroughness of the early plans. 
Dr. Chas. Eobinson, Jas. H. Lane, G. W. Deitzler, and Goins Jen- 
kins were constituted a semi-legislative and executive body in whose 
hands the rebels lodged the sovereignty of the "State of Kansas," 
until such time as the several regular departments of government 
could assume the duties of their several functions. Among the early 
acts of this body, involving an exercise of their assumed sovereignty, 
was the issuing of script. This was a kind of circulating medium 
differing in no essentials, other than that this purported to be on the 
authority of a "State," from the early issues of bills by the Confed- 
erate States. Among the claims affidavits we find their own sworn 
statements that this "war script" was received at par for all pur- 
poses "the same as though it were cash and no discrimination was 
made on the sale of goods for script or cash.""' This bold assumption 



*MIb., 131. 
««=Ib., 134. 
«»Repts. Corns., 2d sess , 36 Cong., Vol. III., 937. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. S25 

01 sovereign power was further manifested by requiring the citizens 
to receive this script/" Many took it cheerfully to "sustain the droop- 
ing spirits of the settlers by a manifestation of confidence in the 
movement which none could dispute or doubt," said one free-State 
witness under oath/^ This governmental committee and others, so 
we are told by their own side under oatJi, gave "assurance on be- 
half of the free-State men of the Territory at large, that all script 

VERBATIM WORDING OF KANSAS STATE REBEL SCRIPT.* 



Wood cut: -s^'oman holding scales, 
supposed to be blind to her own 
interests. 



to a 



No. 62. ToPEKA, November 26, 1855. $20. 

This is to certify that Cyrus K. Holiday, or bearer, is entitled, 
on presentation, to receive from the Treasurer of the 

STATE OF IvANSAS 
Twenty dollars, with interest at ten per cent, per annum, for 
account as per bill on file, for the payment of which the faith 
of the State is pledged. 
Attesl^- 

J. K. GooDWix, Sec'y. 

J. H. LANE, Ch'n Ex. Com. 

[The Kansas Freeman Print, Topeka, Kan.] 

VERBATIil WORDING OF CONFEDERATE STATES SCRIPT. 

Two years after the ratification of a treaty of 
No. peace between the Confederate States and the U. S. 11094. 



Cut of building once used for 
Conf. legis. 



hj THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA will pay 

:< to bearer FIVE DOLLARS. 

?^ G Richmond, Februaiy 17, 1864. 



W. BOYD, I Head | 

A. DoAX, For Treasurer. | cut of ] 

For Register. | man. | 



*8^Ib., 938. 

♦Brewerton. The Kansas War (N. Y., '5G). p. 341; 
15 



226 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

should and would be redeemed by the oommittee, dollar for dollar, 
by the voluntary donations, subscriptions, and funds which, from 
tlie circumstances and nature of the impending struggle, and the 
interest manifested throughout the JSForthern Stales, they then felt 
assured would speedily come into their hands for the purpose of sus- 
taining the object that the Lawrence people and their sympathizers 
and friends throughout the Territory were contending for."**' Here 
again is evidence, and that nearly contemporary with the events 
themselves, that this rebellion got its strength from the North. In 
November, 1855, "the free-State Executive Committee" issued $15,- 
2G5.90 of this circulating medium, sa3'S Wilder. He furthermore 
says, "The first Topcka Legislature, as required by the constitution, 
made provision for its redemption.""" 

Various other instances of assumed civil authority are on record. 
One mentioned by Governor E. J. Walker in an official communica- 
tion on Sept. 26, 1857, to Brevet-Brig. Gen. Wm. S. Homey, is 
perhaps most important. Said Governor Walker, "The insurgent 
govenrment . . ., under the erroneous opinion that the troops had 
all been ordered to Utah, and would not be replaced by others, have 
passed a compulsory tax law, authorizing the seizure and sale of 
property, and exacting from their executive officers the enforcement 
of this ordinance under the solemnity of an oath. "He directed 
Gen. Horney to order troops to the vicinity of Lawrence to suppress 
this flagrant illegality.*" 

These various assumptions of axithority and efforts to exercise the 
functions of government, were, many of them, after the President's 
proclamation, and some of the boldest efforts at putting their gov- 
ernmental machinery in motion were persistently pursued for many 
months and in some instances for years thereafter and in knowing 
disobedience thereof. There was a reciprocal support, during all 
this time, between the civil authority and the armed soldiery. For 
instance, during 1856 all tlie stores in Lawrence were forcibly im- 
poverished by armed free-State "soldiers" who paid nothing, but 
left the items "to be charged to the committee of safety and by 
them paid for as part of the expenses of the war.""' In August of 



♦'»Ib., 938. 

*»0Annals of Kans. (1886), 87. 

*"Exec. Docs., 1 sess., .35 Cong.. Vol. II., pt. 2. No. 2, p. 121. 

«"Repts. Corns., 2(J sess., 36 Cong., Vol. III., 937. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 237 

that year, the entire toAvn of Lawrence, with several hundred sol- 
diers to support, could show but "fouii:.een sacks of flour, no meal, 
beef, or bacon of consequence.' "'■"' This "military organization, with 
patrols and sentinels at night, was kept up in Lawrence during De- 
cember (1856) and Januar}^ and February (1857)" to the number 
of five or six hundred.'"* Even then, as we shall see, the end was not 
3et. The demand for food necessitated extensive stealing;'"^ men 
with wives sick in bed* were driven from home, and nothing of any 
value, from the "fat ox""° to almanacs,'" escaped the destruction 
which followed the bloody tracks of this rebellion, as numerous 
sworn witnesses tell us in corroboration of the army officers of the 
United States, generally Northern men who followed the Union 
cause through the Civil War, — the deposing witnesses being gen- 
erally Northern men and foT the most part, in one capacity or an- 
other, engaged with the free-State party. 

It would be unfair to fail to state that through the various claims 
depositions we now and then find a claim for damages on account 
of depredations committed by men from Missouri whom the wit- 
nesses describe as "drunken, marauding brutes in the shape and 
form of men,'"'' "armed bands of marauding wretches,""^ etc. But 
the evidence toucliing depredations by Missourians or other South- 
ern men discloses several facts: (1) Much of it is entirely guess 
work, such as the evidence of Michael Glen, who says, "It was de- 
stroyed by Missourians, as I suppose" f"" or that of one Michael 
Przybytowicz,, whose stnff was burned in a barn adjoining a house 
which he declared he heli&ved was fired by political enemies f"^ or 
that of the witness who said they w^ere "making pretty free, I guess, 
with propert}^ that they wanted";'"' (2) there is no proof of or- 
gamzed invasions. I have given the official evidence, showing that 
such parties as entered the Territory from IVIissouri or the South 



"^ib., 942. 

««Ib., 940-3. 

«nb., 137. 138, 203, 919, 415. 1153, 1317, 1319, 1189. 

♦lb., 298. 

«6ib., 261. 

«nb., 419. 

«8Ib., 1007. 

^''Ib., 375, 447, 148. 

s'^Reps. Corns., 3d sess., 36 Cong., Vol. IIL, 487. 

"O'lb., 580 

JM'^Ib., 545 



228 XORTIIERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN" SECESSION. 

were the result of spasmodic efforts to. counteract XoTthern move- 
niemts; (3) even these counteracting nwvements ceased voluntarily 
nearly two years before the Nortli^rn party was suppressed at the 
point of Federal bayonets; (4) comparatively the damage wrought 
by Southern invasions, if that word is preferred, Avas most insigni- 
ficant. 

One of the most noted and extensive of the depredating excur- 
sions from Missouri, as well as one which is representative, is that 
made in the fall of 1856 by G. W. Clark, with a band of about one 
dozen Missourians. "He threw down fence©,, destroyed crops, 
seized horses and cattle, burnt a few cabins, and occasionally drove 
an obnoxious settler out of the country," is the most serious indict- 
ment which Mr. Spring in his History of Kansas (p. 2^9) can bring 
against Cla.rk. No one charges him with having killed any one; 
and whatever he may have done, there is one thing sure, he was en- 
tirely unsupported by the South or the Southern emigrants in Kan- 
sas or Missouri. His depredations and those of his men were en- 
tirely the work of a band of private outlaws. His raid in the fall 
of 1856, of which Spring speaks, it must be remembeired, was the 
last of the so-called "raids, by Missouri ruffians." "Clark's raid was 
the last considerable dash from Missouri into the Territory" until 
the outbreak of the Civil War.'"" Of course, no one charges that 
there was ever a raid or "dasli" from any other Southern quarter. 
But after Clark's raid the insurgents carried on the resistance to 
the authority of both the Territorial government and that of the 
United States, and also their excursions for pillage and marauding 
for three years. Mr. Spring admits that the N'orthern outlaws, 
armed as we have seen with TsTorthern gims, "established a free- 
booting reputation that fairly intimidated pro^slavery adherents. 
The accounts of marauding incursions from Missouri, which ap- 
peared in contemporary prints, were mostly canards circulated by 
jayhawkers [assassins] as an excuse for their own depredaitions,"""' 
declares Prof. Spring. 

From the .opening of hostilities at Lawrence, then, in 1855, the 
impetus which the North had given the insurrection sent murderous 
bands of free-State men up and down in the land until the spring 



'-"Hh., 241. 
•«*Ib.. 241-2. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 229 

of 1858. "Well-planned evasions of and resistance to the civil laws 
enacted by the Southern legislature at Lecompton, which body had 
been co^nfirmed by the President and the Congress of the United 
States, had a pretty clear field. IMissonri was plnndered, her homes 
robbed, men were taken to ignominious imprisonment, horses, and 
money were stolen, and death dealt out with lavish hand. Clark's 
raid was made a pretext for gratifying many personal and political 
enmities. The notorious jSTorthern insurrectionist, Montgomery, 
caught, robbed, and plundered the homes of twenty Missourians on 
one of his raids. He accused these men of being in Clark's retalia- 
tory excursion, but the truth was that no more, if so many, than one 
dozen were in Clark's party.'"" Eapidly the situation grew more 
desperate, until its distress led to what is known as the Marais des 
Cygnes massacre. This occurred near Trading Post about May 19, 
1858. It was led by Capt. Chas. A, Hamilton, formerly of Georgia, 
and said to be of an excellent and wealthy family. He was accom- 
panied by a number of Misso'urians whose friends had either been 
robbed or killed by ]\Iontgoniery, or some other marauding aboli- 
tion band. Hamilton captured eleven men, five of whom he killed, 
and the others he seriously wounded. It seems that Hamilton was 
rather after personal enemies than those of a different political faith. 
However, as in the case of Clark, it was an affair with which the 
Southern cause had absolutely nothing to do. Neither he nor his men 
were armed by the pro-slavery party; and they were incited to the 
deeds by nothing other than a thirst for personal vengeance. It was 
an inexcusable homicide. I make no attempt to palliate the crime, 
though its justification might have been found in the unmitigated 
guerrilla war which the insubordination of the anti-sla.very people 
had brought upo^n the country. It was in retaliation for numerous 
raids into Missouri. To us it is of most importance because it was 
the close of any aggressive move which might be ascribed to the 
Southern people in ]\Iissouri. On the other hand, the armed forces 
of the free-State rebels were in open insurrection from the first re- 
pulse of the Territorial and Federal authorities at Lawrence in De- 
cember, 1855, up to their subjugation by the strong arm of the Fed- 
eral authority, which was more than four years after the fruition of 
N oithern grown rebellion on Kansas plains. 



'^"^Spring, History Kansas, 241. 



230 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

Not alone was Kansas agitated and murdered ; the entire country 
caught fire. Congress began to be disturbed. Bill after bill, meas- 
ure after measure were proposed. Some proposed to send Lieut.- 
Gen. Scott with a large army to establish peace. "Toombs, of 
Georgia, submitted a plan of adjustment, the terms of which were 
fair and unpartizan." But tlirough the opposition of anti-slavery 
Northern men the bill was lost in the House.'"" Congress could 
agree upon but one measure, — the appointment of a committee of 
investigation by the Hoaise of Eepresentatives. Pursuant to this 
agreement, Hons. W. A. Howard, of Michigan ; Mordecai Oliver, of 
Missouri, and John Sherman, of Ohio, were appointed and ordered 
to make an investigation. They began work April 14, 1856, at Kan- 
sas City, Missouri. They examined hundreds of witnesses, Mr. 
Spring says three hundred and twent3^-three, and in July following 
rendered to the House the two reports accompanied by the evidence, 
to all of which I have so frequently referred in this discussion, and 
which I examined as fully as space and purpose would allow. How- 
ever, in Kansas the troubles went on apace, as we have seen. The 
North continued her sympathy and support. Dr. Eobinson, the 
"general in command" of the insurgents, was declared a traitor to 
the United States, arrested and imprisoned. In my closing chapter 
I show how the North, as it began to get possession of the machinery 
of the Federal government, used its strong arm 'to extricate him and 
his fellow-traitors. Lane, the second in command, continued at 
the head of hundreds of well-armed men. No request for help 
from the North was made in vain. Sheriff Jones was shot while in 
Lawrence on duty with United States soldiers. On May 8, 1856, 
ex-Governor Eeeder resisted a writ in the hands of Deputy United 
States Marshal Fain, and threatened the officer's life. Eeeder was 
trying to carry out his obligation to support sedition and to resist, 
even if doing so meant the loss of his life, the lawful authority ; I 
refer to the obligation which I have herein previously given. The 
rejection of the fair and equitable plan from the South by Toombs 
showed that the North meant to crush the South by first begin- 
ning with the Southern people in Kansas. The unfairness and par- 
tisan character of the Northern members in Congress were attested 
by the character of the anti-Southern members on the committee 



"Spring, History Kans., 107. 



NORTHEEN REBELLION AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 231 

of investigation. These members showed their unfairness not alone 
in their report, but by their actions while the investigation was in 
progress. For instance, ^Vhile serving on the conunittee, Messrs. 
Howard and Sherman spent an entire night at Topeka in plotting 
with Jlobinson and W. Y. Eoberts against the orders of the United 
States Territorial governor, and laws passed by the legally elect-ed 
Territorial legislature. Speaking of this nocturnal conference, Mr. 
Spring, who is quoted by all Northern historians as authority, says, 
"The conclusions reached at the conference had a belligerent 
look.^'°°^ They agreed upon continued resistance, and Eobinson was 
to go East for further help. No wonder we have a grossly partisan 
report from ]\Iessrs. Sherman and Howard; they were patrticipes 
crimims. Pui-suant to the agreement, Eobinson started North, but 
was arrested and detained, as I have stated. Encouraged by the 
very men whose duty it was impartially to determine the questions 
involved, the insurgents became yet bolder and more aggressive. 
Then followed the massacre — one of the blackest in the annals of 
America — at Pattawatomie, in -which John Brown incited and led 
a small band of the insurgents. Northern free-Stat« men, to mur- 
der. Five imoifending Southern men were dragged from their beds, 
and "mortally hacked and slashed with cutlasses." Howard and 
Sherman, the Eepublican members of the investigating committee, 
declined to enter into an investigation of this revolting affair, — to 
investigate which and to report the facts to Congress was clearly 
within their dut}^; they had been ordered to investigate all alleged 
violations of law, whether it be that of the Territorial law or other- 
wise, as well as to inquire into all charges of fraud or force or inti- 
midation in the elections."" This refusal lent to the affair moral 
approval as well as indicated deep partisan prejudices. Shortly 
after this affair Brown and his insurgent forces fought a "battle" 
with a number of Missourians who were acting in conjunction with 
the United States forces. Sharp's rifles, contributed by public sub- 
scription or private Northern money, gave Brown the victory. 
Northern men, led by Brown, "armed with Sharp's rifles, pistols, 
bowie-knives, and other deadly ^wapons," flushed with victory, then 
fell to robbing stores — upon one raid they forcibly intruded into the 



'History Kans., 115. 

»App. Cong. Globe, 34 Cong., 1 sess., 636. 675, 690, 291. 



232 KOKTHEKN EEBELLIOX AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

private apartments of a young lad}- — and otherwise terrorized the 
land/"" From all over the Territory, esi>ecially from Lawrence, the 
"free-State men were astir." In addition to the several leaders of 
the Northern party which I have mentioned. Walker, Crocklin, Ab- 
bott., AVhinney, Shoe, all took the field with each his men well armed. 
The coming of Bnford, of Alabama, accompanied by Titus, is gen- 
erally misrepresented or improperly estimated. Buford and his 
men did not reach the Territory until May, 1856; this was shortly 
after his company had been gathered."'" The jS^orthern rebellion 
was then in full blast, and it was to counteract it that Buford left 
the South. His movement was on the principle of a "volunteer 
militia to sustain the laws" of what the President of the United 
States had declared to be the lawful legislature, but at the same 
time he meant to make every man he carried to Kansas an actual 
settler. January 19, 1856, in the Alabama Spirit of the South, he 
set forth the objects and requirements of his movement in plain 
^I'ords. He said, "By way of remunerating me for the privilege of 
joining my party, for subsistence and transportation to Kansas, 
and for furnishing means to enter his pre-emption, each emigrant 
agrees to acquire a pre-emption, and to pay me, when his titles are 
perfected, a sum equal to the value of one-half of his pre-emption, 
which obligation he may discharge in mone}'' or property at a fair 
valuation, at his own option. ... I am asked, 'What military and 
other service do I require?' None, excej^t that when he gets to 
Kansas, tlie emigrant shall begin some honest employment for a 
living — if it be working on his claim — that will give him credit to 
buy bread on. On his way there he is expected to be orderly and 
temperate, to attend to the reading of the Scriptures and prayer 
night and morning, learn to fear God, to be charitable to our ene- 
mies, gentle with females and those in our power, merciful to 
slaves and beasts, and just to all men.""' 

His was the only considerable or important movement from the 
South. This party, no sooner than it entered Kansas, was ordered 
by those in command of the United States troops, whose business 
was to prevent all large parties of armed emigrants from entering 



=o«Rept. Corns.. 36 Cong.. 2 sess., Vol. III.. 1317, 1319; Spring, History Kans., 
157 ; Rhodes, History U. S., Vol. II., ch. 7. 

"ORepts. Corns.. .36 Cong.. 2 sess.. Vol. III., 037. 
"'Quoted in Brewerton, The War in Kans. (1856), 213. 



NORTHEHX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 233 

the Territory at that time, to retire. This they peaceably and 
without unnecessary dehiy did.'" (See Clayton, under Authorities.) 
The North was more determined. "A fierce agitation flamed and 
roared like a prairie fire from Boston to the ISTorthw-est,'' sap a sym- 
pathizing Northern writer. New societies of abolition, or fi-ee-State, 
people were formed for the purpose of gathering aid for the conflict ; 
one organization "harvested not less than two hundred thousand 
dollars for Kansas purposes." The Massachusetts committee secured 
large supplies in addition to eighty thousand dollars. "The Grand 
Kansas Aid Society-," organized in Buffalo, New York, raised in 
July, 1856, two hundred thousand dollars.'" "Eager cooperative 
activities awoke on every side" in the North.'" Armed bodies of 
men continued to arrive. C. B. Limes, for instance, arrived from 
New Haven, Connecticut, with "seventy-nine resolute men," armed 
with Sharp's carbines. The famous Ajnois A. Lawrence and Dr. 
Samuel Cabot, of Boston, shipped at one time four thousand dollars 
worth of the famous Sharp's rifles. September 19, 1856, Eev. 
Theo. Parker wrote, "Dr. Howe and others raised five thousand dol- 
lars last week to buy Sharp's rifles. We want a thousand rifles, and 
got two hundred in one day.""' On September 20th following, the 
same distinguished Boston minister read to his Sunday congi-ega- 
tion reports by Northern writei-s concerning Kansas and the opera- 
tions which the North was there supporting, omitted the Bible les- 
son, took up a collection on behalf of the rebels, and got $300."" 
AVell did these influential Northern men know^ that lefore this aid 
given by them, the President of the United States had declared the 
Northern sedition and resistance then in, progress to be rebellion.'" 
This money was for the same men, for the same cause, and to fur- 
ther nothing other than the identical rebellion then yet in prog- 
ress against both Territorial and Federal laws. It Avas well k-nown 
that there had been no change whatever in the situation. These 
Northerners knowingly shrank not from furnishing guns and monev^ 
to active, organized rebels against the authority and government of 

"=Sen. Docs., 3 sess.. 34 Cong., Vol. III.. 50; lb., Vol. II., 73. 

'^'Harper's Book of Facts, Kansas. 

'"Spring, History Kans., 164. 

"'Frothingham. Life of Theo. Tarlver, 437. 

"nb., 438. 

"'Supra. 



234 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

the United States. This was none other than open war, yet it was 
none other than what these abettors and aiders wanted. Parker so 
declared on ISTovember 16, 1856, when he said, "We must settle this 
question by the sword. There are two constitutions for America, — 
one wi-itten ooi parchment and laid up at Washington; the other 
also on 'parchment, hut on the head of a drum."''^^ 

Some of the contemporary writers, boasting of their bloody deeds, 
give us pictures which more recent historians shrink to repeat. 
Prominent among such early writers was William P. Tomlinson, a 
young New Yorker who went to Kamsas in 1858. He wrote before 
the true import O'f what he recorded could be seen. There is not a 
line in his book which shows that the South, directly or indirectly, 
had any connection with the deeds of violence committed by a few 
individuals who were Southern born. Such men, I must be par- 
doned for repeating, were neither aided, encouraged, nor in any 
way abetted, eitheT before or after the fact, by the South, or by 
Southern people or sympathizers. But there is much in Mr. Tom- 
linson's book to show the complicity of the North in the bloody re- 
bellion against the Federal laws and authority and against the Ter- 
ritorial laws and authority. It is a valuable witness to corroborate 
the other evidence which I have aidduced to sustain the counts in 
my indictment. He fully corroborates what Governor Shannon 
says in his report to the President, and shows that Shannon's fears 
were literally fulfilled. He fully sustains the scores of witnesses ex- 
amined by the Congressional committee, which were introduced to 
show the sedition and its support from the North. 

It will be remembered that we saw Major Abbott in Massachu- 
setts, procuring and packing on a Sunday, under the auspices of 
the Emigrant Aid Company, Sharp's rifles and other munitions of 
war. It will be remembered, too, that this was long before Dow was 
killed, and shortly after the election of the legislature on March 30, 
1855. About the time that ]\Ir. Tomlinson was making his Kan- 
sas trip, this same Major Abbott was operating in full vigor on the 
Kansas plains. The major had instituted a "court" compoised of 
free-State people ; they were those who Avere in full sympathy with 
or actually engaged in the rebellion. Before this body he dragged 
and "tried" and fined his Southern or pro-slavery neighbors. Since 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. £35 

the days of the Feudal lords — in fact,, the famous Spanish inquisi- 
tion would be needed to furnish a parallel — such an abortion of 
law, order, and justice has not been known. He made no pretence to 
authority other than that which he professed to derive fro^m the re- 
bellious government or from force. On one occasion a United States 
officer, Marshall Little, wate sent to take "Judge" Abbott and his 
"court officers." Tomlinson tells us that, "On the 15th of Decem- 
ber Major Abbott and Dr. " were found by the United 

States officer and his men holding "Citizens' Court." "The court," 
the writer continues, "was held in a log building, which had been 
converted into a tolerable Fort, being furnished with loop-holes, 
etc," The Federal officer notified the insurgents that lie held papers 
for their arrest, and demanded their surrender. The insurgents 
refused his demand, upon which he advanced on the building. "As 
they came up to the fort, the squatters opened upon them a steady 
and destructive fire," in which the marshal was wounded and some 
of his men killed. Here is the direct result of Northern guns, of 
Northern encouragement, and the outcome of the "popular North- 
em subscriptions," again in contact with Federal authority."* 

The place where Abbott and his men held their court, was Imown 
as "Fort Bayne." He had succeeded in driving off the officers of 
the law; he had defied the authority of the United States. What 
was the result after he had time for deliberation? Did the illegal 
court disband ? By no means ! The notorious Montgomery or- 
ganized, drilled, and equipped a new company of Northern men for 
the purpose of defending Abbott against further molestation from 
any opposing source whatever. For months again he held the coun- 
try in terror. A Territorial and lawful judge was arrested by the 
insurgents as he was quietly passing along the highway .'"' Not con- 
tent with resisting and maltreating the TeTritorial and Federal offi- 
cers, Montgomery and his men, armed with Sharp's rifles, visited 
the homes of Southern men and ordered them to leave the Terri- 
tory."^ If this order was not immediately obeyed, Tomlinson says 
their "homes" were searched, and "airms, ammunition, and horses, 
etc., taken from them." What the "etc." was the writer leaves us 



"'Tomlinson's Kansas in 1858, 179, 181. 
»!»Ib., 159. 
e*ilb., 175. 



23G NORTHEUX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

to guess. After the frontiersman had had his "arms, ammunition 
and horses" stolen or taken by illegal brute force, what could the 
l)0or fellow have had left? Perhaps t]ie strength to carry his wife 
and children out of the woods or off of the prairie on his back ! 

Witliout talcing the time to go into details concerning Mont- 
gomery's movements, I stop to recount but one or two of his "feats." 
On one occasion he and eight men were out on a reconnoitering ex- 
pedition. They were discovered near a United States fort. Capt. 
Anderson, of the United States army, in command of a body of 
regular soldiers, went after these insurgents. Montgomery and his 
band took cover ; as soon as the soldiers were in range of his Sharp's 
rifles, he opened fire. Our Northern writer gives us the result : 
"The Free-State loss was nome, and but one man was wounded, and 
he only slightly. . . . The loss to the troops was considerable.""" 
"The blood oozed from the wounded men lying in all positions upon 
the velvety sward." Capt. Anderson, apparently d3dng, lay under 
his fallen horse. The rebels wanted the gams of the fallen soldiers, 
"but their leader would not allow it. It was Uncle Sam's property, 
he said, . . . and it was not right to steal from the old gentleman, . . . 
but when the old gentleman got out of his place it was perfectly 
right to Icani him his place."°^ A wonderful ethical faculty, this, — 
the ability to distinguish the sin of tlieft while reveling in assassi- 
nation! Mr. Tomlinson continues: "By that fights — the fight be- 
tu'een the settlers and the federal soldiery in Kansas — it was satis- 
factorily demonstrated that a Sharp's rifle ball, carefully directed, 
would have the same effect upon a dragoon as upon a common man. 
and the soldiers of Fort Scott, by their after-conduct, gave evidence 
that the demonstration was not wholly lost upon them.""* 

It would be superfluous again to call attention to the res^wnsi- 
bility of the North for this blood of Union soldiers. "Eich New 
Englanders," those who contributed to "}X)pular subscriptions," 
tliose who "like a flaming meteor" had helped to arouse the North, — 
had armed in time of peace and months before any hostile demon- 
stration by their political opponents, Abbott, Lane, Kobinson, and 
the many hundreds of others ; Abbott and his associates had called 



»»2Ib., 199. 
«3Ib., 200. 
»"Ib., 201. 



NORTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERX SECESSION. 237 

out, armed, encouraged, and incited Montgoanery ; from his hiding 
place Montgomery murdered United States soldiers while they were 
in the discharge of their official duty. But the connection between 
cause and effect did not stop at this. "From all parts of the Terri- 
tory," says To-mlinson, "congratulations poured in on jMontgom- 
ery.""' ''The Lawrence Republican [established by Xorthern capi- 
tal], in an able editorial, expressed its approbation in unmistakable 
language, and among the true friends of freedom all over the Ter- 
ritorj', wherever the affair was understood, there was but one gen- 
eral sentiment of approbation.'"'" A would-be bard composed the 
"Song of Montgomery's jMen," one stanza of which will be sufficient 
to show the sense in which his deeds of violence were received : 

" Even" man of Montgomeiy's band 
Shall live on history's page, 
And Montgomeiy's name have deathless fame 
Upon the Little Osage." 

. A public dinner was given to Montgomery in Osawatomie, "where 
he and his band were applauded for their deeds in speeches made by 
Chas. A. Foster and others.'"" 

Encouraged, elated, and fully sustained by the abolition or in- 
surgent element, Montgomeiy became more aggressive. He went so 
far as to attack Fort Scott.^^' In the darkness, for the attack was 
under cover of night, the "sentinels were quietly secured," and the 
fort and tJie hotel were set on fire. The soldiers responded quickly 
to the alarm. Tomlinson sa3's, "But scarcely had they collected, 
before a fire was opened upon them by the men of Montgomery from 
a ravine close at hand to which they had retreated. . . . There is 
something exciting in the rapid discharge of Sharp's rifles. . . . The 
fi]-ing ^\'as kept up by the little band of ^Montgomery until the fire 
[which had failed to spread] . . . had died away, enveloping the 
town in pitchy darkness, when the little party of Free-State men 
slowly and in orderly manner left the place.""" Again here were 
those deadlv N'orthern sims, contributed 1)v "Rich Xew England- 



5«Ib., 201. 
^"''Ib.. 202. 
=-'Kan. Historical Cols.. Vol. V., 532. 

"»Ib., 216. 



238 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

ers/' or bought "by popular subscriptiooa," having been "shipped by 
the carload," carrying out Northern resolutions, "at all hazards/' 
in a truly exciting, loyal ( !) manner. But in tliis attack on the 
public property and soldiery- of the United States, Federal troops 
alone did not suffer. Tomlinson further says, "The shrieks of the 
women and the children could be heard above the sharp reports of 
the firearms.""" This witness who thus deposes to us through his 
history published shortly after the events which he describes, was 
a N"orthern man, an abolitionist, an anti-slavery man, an insurrec- 
tionist himself, and an eye witness. His story was published before 
the North had time or opportunity to fabricate a version of the 
"Kansas war." Mr. L. W. Spring wrote his history of Kansas in 
1885. He is taken as authority by Northern writers. He is given 
as the authority for many statements made by such eminent histo- 
rians as Channing and Ehodes. He is in sympathy with the :^ ' 
tiofn movement ; and so far as one can judge from his work, he is in 
full sympathy with the free-State movement in his own State of 
Kansas. There is nothing in his -WTitings which shows that the 
South had the slightest connection with the individual wrongs done 
l)y the Southern or pro-slavery men in Kansas; but, on the other 
hand, he sul^stantially coirroborates the statements of Tomlinson. 
So from the most reliable historical sources, there can be no other 
conclusion than that the insurrection was against both Territorial 
and Federal authority'. To quote Mr. Spring again: "Free-State 
men in the Southwest, comparatively isolated, having little coan- 
munioation with Lawrence, and consequently almost wholly with- 
out check, developed a successful if not very praiseworthy sptem of 
retaliation. Confederated at first for defence against pro-slavery 
outrages, but ultimately falling more or less completely into the 
vocation of rol^bers and assassins they have received the name — 
whatever its origin may be — of jayhawkers.'"" The section of coun- 
try of which he here speaks was that in which ]\Iontgomery was oper- 
ating. They were not so isolated from nor had so little communica- 
tion with Lawrence as this seems to indicate. Northern residents of 
Lawrence sustained or encouraged in a very large measure to the very 
last these murderers. Just over on page 242, Mr. Spring, after stat- 



""Ib., 217. 

=3iHistory Kans., 240. 



NOETHERX REBELLIOX AND SOUTHERI^' SECESSION. 239 

ing that a deleg-ation of these desperadoes had been sent to Lawrence 
for help in December, 1857, continues, "However, a small company 
from the vicinity of Lawrence, led by Capt, [Major] J. B, Abbott, 
returned with tlie messengei-s for the purpose of investigating af- 
faii-s and of lending such assistance to the free-State men that 
might be possible or advisable." We have already seen "Captain- 
Major" Abbott operating vigorously in this same locality in the 
following year. Mr. Spring informs us that after Abbott and his 
Lawrence friends arrived at tlieir destination, they "arrested" a 
citizen of Missouri and "tried" him before one of those illegal, ir- 
regular, seditious courts of which Mr. Tomlinson tells us. Of this 
particular session Mr. Spring says, "The officers of which were 
mostly drawn from the Lawrence party." Evidently, then, Law- 
rence, the center of the disturbance, did her share to prolong tlie 
struggle. Abbott was the very man who had packed his carbines on 
a Sunday in the North some years before ; he continued to the last 
to be the "fully accredit" agent of the rebellion. This so-called 
court, as we saw, continued its usurpation until close onto the Civil 
War; finally it was suppressed by the Federal authority. Mr. 
Spring details some of the attempts of the Federal authorities to 
disband this organization. After considerable ineffectual himting, 
the Federal officer discovered the "fort" and the "court." The build- 
ing was surrounded, and the Federal officer said to the insurgents, 
^'G-entlemen, you will understand that you are dealing with the 
United States, and not with border ruffians." He then ordered a 
full surrender, and after a wait of thirty minutes, charged the "ju- 
dicial" gentlemen. Mr. Spring says, "A dozen Sharp's rifles re- 
s])onded to the charge," and the Federal officers were driven off. 
The Federal force was increased ; but, so Spring says, "Reinforce- 
ments hurried down from Lawrence" to the aid of the rebels.^"'' 
The southeast was not so isolated after all ! Communication with 
Lawrence was so complete that the lawful, rightful officers were 
forced to retire, and sedition went unpunished. 

Events were now hastening; the Presidential election trembled 
in the balance, and a nation stood in awe of the result. Lincoln 
"became the President, not because a majority of the sovereign vot- 
ers of the United States chose liim, but because his next highest op- 



240 NORTHEKX REBELLION AND SOUTHEKX SECESSION. 

ponent had lost the requisite electoral votes; Southem members 
began to witlidraw from Congress, after which, scarred with the 
seal of the Northern political policy, Kansas became a State. She 
entered the Union stained mth blood, — blood shed certainly not to 
make a home for the free negro or to secure freedom to him or 
bring him from under the yoke. The Xortliern party had denied 
the negro or his mulatto cousin a home or a resting place in Kan- 
sas. This, in various unmistakable ways, was declared to be their 
position, especially in the government resting upon the Topeka 
constitution, Avhich forbade free negroes or nmlattoes to come into 
or reside in the State. This provision was sanctioned, it will be re- 
membered, by almost an unanimous vote of the Northern ele- 
ment."' But if not in the interests of enslaved humanity, where 
did the North find a motive for such gigantic movements, such de- 
termined and aggresisive onslaughts upon the Constitutional rights 
of the South ? Let us go once again to the fountain source of that 
movement which not alone itself spurned all legal ethics, but which 
fanned into a consuming flame less aggressive agencies — back to 
the plans set out and the appeals made for their support by the or- 
ganizing committee of the original emigrant incubator, to the re- 
port drawn by E. E. Hale, D. D., and others interested with him, 
and published by them in 1854. As a motive for capturing the 
new territories they declared : "Whether the new line of states shall 
be free states, is a question deeply interesting to those who are to 
provide the manufactories for their consumption. Especially -will 
it prove an advantage to Massachusetts if she creates the new states 
by her foresight^ — supply the first necessities to its inhabitants, and 
open in the outset communications between their homes and her 
ports and factories."'"* 

There is the motive, the prime object — there is the secret for 
manufacturing New England's plans of bold conquest. That sec- 
tion, througli rich and influential men, declares she means to check 
the forming of new slave States, to put a cordon of free States from 
IMinnesota to the Gulf, and after that to invade Missouri and Vir- 
ginia. The world looked on and saw upon the banner of the North- 
ern crusade: "A Free-State"; but as the conflict deepened leaders 



"•nvan. Hist. Cols., Vol. V.. Vi^O. 

°3^E. E. Flale. Kanzas and Nebraska (lS."i4), 22C. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 241 

then and too many of their chroniclers since resorted to equivoca- 
tion and subterfuge to blind that world to the utter want of philan- 
thropic consideration for either the slave or free negro — and of the 
latter there were then in the South hundreds of thousands. The 
Northern masses were blinded to the fact that their manufacturing 
or importing leaders wanted free States with white labor, because 
slave States bought little ; so simple was slave life and so crude were 
the instruments and machinery used by servile labor, that manu- 
facturing ISTew England found the Southern States commercially 
unprofitable neighbors. Hence, many of her leaders augmented the 
perverted and mad mania already abroad in her borders to provide 
new and profitable markets, and to open "communications between 
their homes and her ports and factories." 

So the "North, in the end," using the language of Mr. Sparks, a 
non-Southerner writer, "won, as she always did, through geographi- 
cal and commercial advantages. Her urban population gave her 
great advantage in securing bodies of emigrants, her superior re- 
sources furnished the means to send them, and her better facilities 
for transportation made the going easier and more attractive. 
And all her people, although acting from interested motives of 
gaining territory, were wrought up almost to a frenzy by the in- 
spiration of a 'cause,' whilst the Southern people were contending 
for their property and their rights.'"'' 



"=The Expansion of the Am. People, 3G2. 



J6 



XI. 

DEPREDATIONS AFFECTING THE EXIST- 
ING SOUTHEEN STATES. 

The Kansas troubles had found their oppoTtunity in the scramble 
for territory. While they were by no means local in their effect, 
yet, long before this territorial war, other depredations of wider 
?weep had been preying upon the South. These were of great 
po-n-er in shaping the history of the pre-bellum period. Under the 
second count in the indictment against the Nortli which I have 
herein formulated on behalf of the South, I placed the illegal, un- 
<)onstitutional, XJNWAERANTED, interference with the property 
mterests of the existing Southern States, I stated that these led, 
not alone to financial losses, but to imminent danger to the lives, 
homes, and female security of the South. The most potent agency 
in this direction, is what was commonly called the "Underground 
Eailroad," — with all its incidental and cooperative agencies. Most 
of the literature descriptive of this institution is either fragmen- 
tary or very local; and I am of the decided opinion that the mas- 
sive volume by Prof. W. H. Siebert, of the Ohio State University, 
is in the main fair, reliable, and certainly the only comprehensive 
work to which my attention has been called. Dr. A. B. Hart, pro- 
fessor of history in Harvard University, in his introduction to this 
work, makes an error common to Northern writers. He says, ". . . 
abolitionists felt a moral responsibility even though property-own- 
ers suffered. ... In aiding fugitive slaves the abolitionist was . . . 
enjoying the most romantic and exciting amusement open to men 
who had high moral standards." He states this position as conii- 
dently as though there were no questions as to the correctness of 
these "high moral standards." Anarchists profess to believe in the 
moral justification of their murderous assaults upon governmental 
functionaries. Yet the consensus of sane mankind brands them as 
murderers of the very lowest moral standards. They are univer- 
sally admitted to be either grossly immoral or hopelessly insane. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 243 

A man who does what is productive of infinitely greater harm than 
the e^al he seeks to remedy, when there was within his power such 
information as \A'ould have led him to see the result ; or, having the 
information before the mind, acts in utter disregard of it, is either 
a grossly immoral man or one of dangerously abnormal mental 
balance. The South svibmits to the candid and unprejudiced judg- 
ment of the learned world tliat the acts of the abolitionists made 
the conditions of slavery unavoidably harder; and that their ''ro- 
mantic and exciting amusement" procrastinated the emancipation 
of the Southern slaves; and, therefore, that the abolitionists were 
not "men who had high moral standards," — since all the facilities 
for the exercise of enlightened moral judgment were within their 
power. 

The liquor traffic yearly sends to their graves a great army of 
diiinkards; in thousands of desolate homes are heartbroken wives 
and mothers to whose tattered garments cling puny children tliat 
shall never know the common comforts of life; our criminal courts 
overflow with the product of the saloon; directly and indirectly we 
spend enormous millions in mailing a sickly effort to right the evils 
of the whiskey dispensers. The stench of the liquor traffic is so 
powerful that it has become a narcotic to tlie American people. 
Dens of prostitution where once innocent women go down to deep- 
est perdition, and dives of vice where innocent boys are begrimed 
with sins of which their mothers have never dreamed, have become 
the inevitable satellites of the saloon. Would moralists be justi- 
fied in the systematic and persistent destruction of the property 
used in such places; or in pursuing an unlawful course in their ef- 
fort to rid the community of the evil? To do so would lead to 
anarchy or war, — would be the subversion of law and government. 
In its application to slavery the illustration is apt. The question 
is, Would such a course stop the evil, materially mitigate it, or pro- 
duce conditions of less evil ? Just such a course as was pursued by 
the abolitionists did not stop or mitigate slavery ; therefoTC, unjus- 
tifiable and inexcusable, — the product of unreasoning fanatacism. 

When one examines the great matss of facts, now being admitted 
for practically the first time by ISTorthem historians — especially 
when it is realized that the half has not been told, mainly owing 
to the loss of evidence — there is an inclination to believe that many 



244 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of the great efforts to run so many slaves out of the South, was a 
S(;heme to try to force the South to buy the slaves which Northern 
importers were anxious to sell. From all parts of the South emis- 
saries were constantly inducing the slaves to go at the most inoppor- 
tune time for the master. The crop comes on, the cotton is white 
for the harvest, the rice is waiting for garnering, the corn is brown 
in the husk, — ^the master suddenly finds his best field help gone — 
gone northward by way of the "underground.'^ From some source 
the vax^ancy must be supplied or much of the crop will be lost ; and 
a material loss of the crop means sufi'ering, in many cases ; in others, 
hard privations, for wife and children. Except inferentially, his- 
tory does not show any contract between the "conductors on the un- 
derground system," their various "passenger agents" that had been 
sent throughout the South, and the Northern "importer." But if 
men would falsify the census of the United States, as Seibert shows 
was twice done, to cover up the operations of the "railroad system," 
would the thief who stole the negro hestitate to cooperate with the 
pirate who enslaved him ? 

Perhaps no feature of slave legislation has caused more comment, 
or been used to justify more illegalities, than the various fugitive 
slave laws. In this, just as when writing of slave legislation gen- 
erally, writers are too apt to forget that New England furnishes us 
more than one of the earliest fugitive slave laws. Of course, the 
fact that New England, or any part of the North did a thing, was 
neither its justification nor condemnation so far as the same action 
concerned the South. But the lesson to be gathered in going to the 
North for her treatment of slaves, or her position toward the negro, 
is that whatever ^\'as in large measure common to the two sections 
must have had some justification under the existing conditions; 
or else that the entire American people were upon the same moral 
plane from which, it certainly cannot be denied, they could not be 
removed within one or two generations. G-reat moral reforms are 
not wrought in a day, or a generation, and scarce in the second or 
third, as I have sought to show was true of the position touching 
the slavery of other countries, which I have discussed in another 
division. We of to-day are not so far removed from the days of our 
Revolutionary fathers as we are liable to think. I represent the 
third generation from the American Eevolution. My paternal 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 245 

grandfather came upon tJie scene in those stormy days; he was a 
young man at tlie formation of the Constitution ; at the time of the 
formulation of the Virginia and Kentucky Eesolutions he was in 
official position. My father had but reached the vigor of his young 
manhood when the crisis in the slavery conflict called him to the 
stern duties of the soldier. Hence, the slave legislation of the North 
from its earliest times is pertinent to show that the Southern peo- 
ple were not essentially different in their slavery position from that 
of their northern neighlx)rs; and that the slave laws of the South 
were not such as were unwortliy the moral conditions of their day. 

In 1643 a Confederation existed between Plymouth, Massachu- 
setts, Connecticut, and JSTew Haven, called the New England Con- 
federation. In that same year a clause was incorporated in the Ar- 
ticles of Confederation which is as follows : "If any servant run 
away from his master into any- other of these confederated Juris- 
diccons. That in such cases upon the Certificate of one Magistrate 
in the Jurisdiccon out of which the said servant fled, or ui3on other 
due proofs, the said servant shall be delivered either to his master 
or any other that pursues and bring-s such Certyficate or proof." 
Many other provisions were made between, the several colonies for 
the return of runaway negroes. These laws continued in force until 
the conditions of climate and industry made the selling-off of 
Northern slaves desirable, — conditions which Burgess''' and the 
many others frankly admit as the causes of Northern emancipation. 
By no means were the provisions concerning the return of escaped 
slaves confined to the colonial period. Hosmer, speaking of the 
slavery conditions in the Northern states, says, "The newspapers teem 
with the advertisements of slaves to sell, and offers of reward for the 
recovery of fugitives."'" Todd tells us that the New York "news- 
papers did a thriving business in publishing advertisements of run- 
away slaves," who were endeavoring to escape their Northern mas- 
ters.=" 

In this connection it is interesting to note the objections to the 
slave laws of more recent years, those laws which had the slaves of 
the South as their object. Of these later and national laws Prof. 



53«The Middle Period, 42. 

"''A Short History Mississippi Valley, 162. 

»38Chas. B. Todd, The Story of the City of New York, 



246 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Channing says, "The right to a jury trial was deaiied to a person 
designated as a fugitive slave"; "tlie affidavit of the person claim- 
ing the negro was sufficient evidence of ownership."''" These later 
laws passed by the United States Congress were but Northern slave 
laws re-enacted. No jury trial was allowed their runaway slaves; 
such slaves could be reclaimed on a mere certificate; or, in the ab- 
sence of such certnficate, "due proof" might be made, which neither 
gave nor was meant tO' give trial by jury. In fact, throughout the 
history of the North, no section enacted more rigorous slave laws, 
or more " 'Black Laws' of varying degrees of rigoi-"''° than did her 
people. The very initial of the national legislation touching run- 
away slaves was a Northern measure, and supported by Northern 
Congressmen at the solicitation of the Northern people. This first 
legislation regulating the return of fugitives from labor was sup- 
ported by almost an unanimous Congress ; out of the entire number 
in Congress, but seven voted against the law, and part of these were 
from the South, This law, enacted in 1793, not essentially differ- 
ent from the revised form enacted in 1850, did not meet the de- 
sired ends because part of its execution was improperly con- 
signed.'" It shows that so long as the financial interests of the 
North were involved, neither as colcmies nor as States did she hesi- 
tate to support a slave law or a slave provision. But just as soon as 
no financial gain was in the North's favor by a return of the fugi- 
tive slaves from the South, then began the ever increasing efforts 
to encourage the negro to flee from his master. So that "by 1850 
the Northern states were traversed by numerous lines of Under- 
ground Eailroad, and the South was declaiming its losses of slave 
property to be enormous,""^ 

Again, in speaking of the later Congressional fugitive slave law. 
Prof. Channing says, "There seems to have been no adequate rea- 
son" for it. When the North owned slaves, some of Avhom fled un- 
assisted and unencouraged by an.} such powerful movement as the 
"underground" system, their flight was thought an "adequate rea- 
son" for a fugitive slave law. It seems very strange, at least to 
some of us who know slavery only as a matter of history, that ade- 

""Students" Hlf?tory V. Si.. 463. 
""Smith. Liberty and Free Soil Tarties, 7. 
"^Morton v. Hunter, 1 Wheaton. .S.^O 
=^^=Siebert, The rndergroiind Railroad. 22. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 247 

quaie reasons were always indigenous to the North, and absolutely 
incapable of acclimation in the Soutli. However "inadequate" tlie 
reason for the fugitive slave laws passed at any time by Congress, 
they found their jS^ECESSITY in ^N'orthem agitation and the work 
of slave emissaries. It is a practical certainty that if the white 
people of the Xorth had not deliberately entered a systematic rob- 
bery of slaveholders, the laws of which the JSTorth complained so bit- 
terly, such as that of 1850, would not only never have seen a statute 
book, but would never have been needed. Surely if ISTorthern slave- 
owners needed protection when there was no widespread band of il- 
legal slave-kidnappei"s and slave-smugglers, the South did find an 
"adequate reason' when, o-^dng to the existence of such "tender- 
hearted" \a\\ violators, the 2>er cent, of losses had vastly grown — 
finally involving millions of dollars. As a substitute for the fugi- 
tive slave law. Prof. Charming suggests "Some scheme of insur- 
ance against slave escapes would have fully protected every South- 
ern slave-owner at trifling cost."'" Mirabile dictu! but some of ns 
can never understand why the North did not embark upon such "a 
scheme." The loser cannot undertake to reimburse himself against 
his own loss ; it would have been a most preposterous proposition 
for the South to have attempted "to insure" herself. The Xorth 
was doing the "charity act," WHY didn't she reimburse the South? 
WHY ? To have done so would not have accomplished the aim of 
her designing politicians; it would not have checked Southern po- 
litical power : nor would it have added a single United States Sena- 
tor to the Xorthern roster. Are these the reasons? But — would 
not non-interference have been more simply? As the Constitu- 
tion provided, to have allowed the South to have managed their 
own slave matters, would not have involved the "insurerer" in such 
questions as determining the loss and its cause, its value, and the 
one hrmdred other questions no less essential and equally impossible 
of solution. Again Prof. Channing has remarked : "Every day that 
slavery existed, the South grew weaker morally, materially, and 
politically.'"" If this be true, Southern slaver}^ was shortly to see 
its final effacement. Why on earth did not the North pursue the 
humane coiirse, and simply let the South die this natural death? 



^"Students' History U. S., 463. 
5«Ib., 462. 



248 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

So generous to kill one's brother and then turn his family out pen- 
niless simply to prevent him passing of? of inherent and mortal in- 
firmities ! 

Notwitlistanding the IS^orth, excepting the insignificant number 
of five votes, initiated the national slave laws ; and so long as slavery 
existed in any of those States they had local fugitive slave laws no 
less rigorous than the law they enacted for the nation, yet some ex- 
cuse must be found for the opposition to the several enactments 
mainly operative in behalf of the Southern master. Prof. Siebert 
justifies them thus : "A government, whose first national manifesto 
contained the exalted principles enshrined in the Declaration of In- 
dependence, stooping to the task of slave catching,- violated all the 
ideas of national dignity, decenc}^, and consistency. Many persons, 
indeed, justified tlieir opposition to the law in the familiar words : 
'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalien- 
able rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness.' " Such a position showed either a warped judgment or 
ignorance of the facts at home, where all moral movements should 
first operate. These moralists should first have turned their bat- 
teries against those of their own section who had deprived more 
negro'es of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" than the 
whole number of slaves held at any one time in the South. Wlien 
pushed to the point, no one reasonably sane among them would have 
contended that "all men are equal." The vastly greater number of 
those who were engaged in enticing or aiding slaves to escape the 
South would not have allowed the negroes whom they assisted to 
have approached a sister or daughter on the subject of mati'imony — 
to the girl herself it would have been a most serious shock. Why ? 
Simply because all the North then stood and now stands on the high 
plane of natural and social inequality. No section of this coimtry 
has stood more firmly on the negative of the proposition that all 
men are their "created" equals than have the people of the North,— 
the only thing of which the South has had to complain has been the 
application of the principle. 

Prof. Siebert further says that those among them "whose re- 
ligious convictions admitted of no compromise," stood upon the 
Scriptural injunction : "Not to deliver unto his master the servant 



JSrOETHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 249 

that had escaped."'" But the South could not reconcile these "re- 
ligious convictions" with the WANT of Bible sanction for helping 
and inducing the servant to run away and escape. The South felt 
that if there w^ere any conflict at all from a Bible standpoint, the 
New Testament certainly was the safer guide; and its commands 
are repeated: "Servants, be obedient unto them that according to 
the flesh are 3-our masters.""*^ "Let as many servants as are under 
the yoke count their own mastei-s worthy of all honor,'-"" "EX- 
HORT servants to be in subjection to their own masters, and to be 
well pleasing to them in all things ; not gainsaying ; not purloining, 
but showing all good fidelity.'"" Here are positive injunctions 
which the North insisted on disobejdng. The last one they entirely 
reversed, and rather than exhort the servant to obey — and the Greek 
liere means a bond servant, just such as was the Southern slave — 
emissaries and literature filled the South EXHOETING him NOT 
to obey. Incendiary literature filled his hands, and no effort was 
spared to make him dangerous to his master. Suppose each side 
had equal Scripture for its justification; and suppose the North 
had all the argument from natural justice to bear out tlie claim 
that they did not want to aid in re-capturing runaways. Granting 
all this, where lies the indictment against the North? It is by no 
means difficult to find. Section 4 of the law of 1793, which, and 
before 1850, various courts, including such States as Massachusetts, 
Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, held to be unquestionably Con- 
stitutional, reads : "And be it further enacted. That any person who 
shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his 
agent or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from 
labor, or shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his agent, 
or attorney, when so arrested pursuant to the authority herein given 
or declared, or shall harbor or conceal such person after notice that 
he or she was a fugitive from labor as aforesaid, shall for either of 
said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars." 
Here were two classes of prohibitions, the violation of either of 
which constituted an offence. The injunction against knowingly 
harboring or concealing the fugitive is both plain and emphatic. 



"'The Underground Railroad, 
=«Eph. vi.. 5. 
"•1 Tim. vi.. 1. 
"82 Titus ii., 9, 10. 



250 NOETHEEN REBELLIOX AXD SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

So far as this provision was concerned, there was neither defect nor 
difficulty. To violate it constituted an offence. A systematic and 
concerted offence against the laws of a country by any one or num- 
ber of its citizens is either criminal in fact;, or revolutionary or rebel- 
lious. No man or faction of men with "high moral standards"' 
can commit crime in their application; if an act. be a crime the 
"high moral standard" under which it was done is shameful hy- 
pocrisy. But those who violated this law insist that they were not 
criminals; hence, perforce of logic, they were incipient rebels. 
The South argues that since these rebellious deeds produced greater 
evils than those sought to be corrected, the perpetrators were like- 
wise fanjatic's. Now, let me briefly inquire to what extent these 
depredations were carried, who were responsible, and when they be- 
gan. 

From the early part of the nineteenth century on to 1860, the 
number of negroes who made frequent trips from Canada, and who 
had previously escaped the South, steadily increased. James Eed- 
path, in his publication in 1860 says, "In the Canadian provinces 
there are thousands of fugitive slaves. They are the picked men of 
the Southern States. Many of them are intelligent amd rich; and 
all of them are deadly enemies of the South. Five hundred of 
them, at least, annually visit the Slave Sta.tes, passing from Florida 
to Harper-'s Ferry. . . . They have carried the Underground Eail- 
road and the Underground Telegraph into nearly every Southern 
State. Here, obviously, is a power of great importance for a M^ar 
of liberation.'"" Otlier writers confirm Eedpath's estimate, and 
leave no doubt that by 1860 this large number had really grown 
much larger than he estimated it to be. This numerous class was 
harljored, fed, and furnished money by the ISTorth.^^" "The work 
done by these fugitives was supplemented by the cautious dis- 
semination of news by the white persons who went into the South 
to abduct slaves or to encourage them to escape, or while engaged 
there in legitimate occupations, use their opportimities to pass the 
helpful word or to afford more substantial aid. The Rev. Charles 
Fairbank, the Rev. Charles T. Torrey, and Dr. Alexander M. Ross 



s^Tublic Life of John Brown, 229. 

J^^oWilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. II. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 251 

may be cited as notable examples of tliis class.""' "Notwithstand- 
ing the distance, the number of scapes from the interior as well as 
from the border slave states seems to have been sufficient to arouse 
the suspicion in the minds of the Southerners that a secret organi- 
zation of abolitionists had agents in the South at work running off 
slaves. This suspicion was brought to light during the trial of 
Richard Dillingham in Tennessee in 1849.""' On the immistakable 
discovery of the organized theft of her slave property, the South be- 
gan to ask for protection at the hands of the Federal government. 
As a result the fugitive slave law of 1850 was enacted. Prof. Sie- 
bert is certainly correct when he says, "The fugitive slave law of 
1850 was the embodiment of Cla/s mighty effort to stop this 
evil.""' There can be no doubt whatever of the fact that the depre- 
dations of the Xortli forced this law upon tlie country. Instead of 
aiding, if the Xorth had discouraged the illegal invasions of the 
South, tlie slave law of 1850 would never had been made, and the 
country would have been spared a great upheaval. Abolitionists 
made the necessitv^ for the protection and then blamed the South 
for her unwillingness to be robbed. 

By no means are we to understand that the efforts to steal slaves 
or to induce them to run away were spasmodic or far between. Xor 
was the effort confined to one localit}\ Eegular stations were early 
established from Boston westward to Iowa and Kansas. Says Sie- 
bert, "We may summarize our findings in regard to the expansion 
of the undergToimd railroad, then, by saying that it had grown into 
a widespread 'institution' before the year 1840, and in several states 
it had existed in previous decades.""* Systematic organization for 
the aid and protection of fugitive slaves took place among the Quak- 
ers in Pennsylvania before 1786"" and from that time, and con- 
tinuously, rapidly spread over the North. In Connecticut the for- 
cible rescue of slaves claimed by Southern men existed through or- 
ganized effort from IT 98'"' down to the Civil War. 

The secrecy which guarded every move and which protected the 



'"Siebert, The Underground Railroad, 2S. 

"2lb., 30. 

=»3Ann. Report Am. Hist. Asso., House Docs., Vol. LXII.. 401. 

5^*The Underground Railroad, 4.3. 

"^Ann. Rep. Am. Hist. Asso., 1895, House Docs., Vol. LXII., 396. 

»5«Howe. History Ohio, Cent. Ed., Vol. III., 328. 



'i52 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

"institution" against discovery, is unsurpassed for completeness; 
and it was owing to this that the facts for many years could not be 
shown. "Much of the communication relative to fugitive slaves was 
liad in guarded language. Special signals, whispered conversa- 
tions, passwords, messages couched in figurative phrases, were the 
common modes of conveying information. . . . Different neighbor- 
hoods had their peculiar combinations of knocks or raps to be made 
upon the door or window of a station when fugitives were awaiting 
admission.'"" 

While it is now impossible to laiow the approximate number who 
availed themselves of the opportunity to go North, yet enough can 
be seen to prove that the number was by no means insignificant. 
"It was a common thing for a station to entertain a company of 
five or six," sometimes twenty-eight or thirty. At tim'cs a single 
home entertained as many as sixty in a single month. In numer- 
ous cases the negroes thus escaping were treated as though they 
had been white people, eating, for instance, at the table Avith the 
white family."'" The white women of the Xorth were not less zeal- 
ous than their men. These women furnished food, clothing, "and 
in many places conducted sewing circles" for the benefit of the es- 
caping negroes. They assisted in collecting money for the purposes 
of hiring conveyances, and in many cases they provided closed car- 
riages. Conveyances of all kinds, many of them of the most de- 
ceptive appearances ; steamboat and railroad transportation, — in 
fact, practically every conceivable method of transportation, "va- 
rious, ingenious, and deceptive devices," Black sa}^,"' were used. 
Powerful railroad systems, such as the Chicago, Burlington and 
Quincy, the Illinois Central, the Cleveland and Pittsburg Rail- 
roadj'^" voluntarily and freely lent their facilities. Before 1817 
five families in Ohio had forwarded to Canada more than one thou- 
sand fugitives.'" Now and then a single individual boasts of hav- 
ing fonvarded as many as one thousand, and some one thousand five 
hundred. Thos. Garrett, of Wilmington, Del., aided two thou- 



="Siebert, The Underground Railroad, 56. 
5581b., 76-7. 

""The Story of Ohio, 216. 

"BOLiberatlon of Fugitive Slaves, Ann. Rep. Am. Hist. Assc, 1895, Ho. Does., 
Vol. LXII., 396. 

"siBlack, The Story of Ohio, 217. 



NORTHEKX EEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 353 

sand seven liimdred runaways in escaping, so reliable authority tell 
ns. Northern members of Congress now and then harbored run- 
away slavas, and also contributed to the expense fund of the under- 
ground/"' The distinguished journalists, Thurlow Weed, Sidney 
Howard Gay, of the New York Trihune, and other Northern news- 
paper men, engaged in the work of helping negroes escape from the 
Southern owners.''' 

Such facts go to show the great extent to which this practice 
was carried, and that all classes lent it aid and support. They show 
that the charges made by the South that the North wa« refusing to 
respect the Constitution or to obey the laws of Congress, were cor- 
rect; they prove her claims that the system was productive of enor- 
mpus losses, and show that her claims of injuries were not over- 
stated. Most serious of all, these losses, inconveniences, and threat- 
ened dangers all helped to embitter the South, and to awaken a 
spirit of opposition to emancipation. That such was the effect is 
nothing more than the result of the human nature just as common 
to one section of this country as to another. If the Nortli herself 
had been free from wongs against the negi'o, and had pursued a 
course of fairness, moderation, and brotherly helpfulness, I am 
sure that Lincoln would never have seen the need of using eman- 
cipation "as a war measure." 

The map showing the different routes of the underground sys- 
tem which accompanies Prof. Siebert's book, is very interesting; 
and, to those of us who know the undergroimd railroad only as his- 
tory or tradition, it is astonishing. The more or less zigzag red hnes 
leading northward, beginning at the north boundary of Maryland 
and thence west^^^ard with the Ohio river, cover the country in hun- 
dreds of longer or shorter lines from the New England States to 
Topeka Kansas. They resemble a modern and complex railroad 
system to which various other branches add their accommodations. 
Of this map Prof. Hart, in his Introduction, remarks, "The facts 
presented in the brief compass of the map would have been of im- 
mense value also to the leaders of the Southern Confederacy m 
1861 as a confirmation of their argument that the North would 



=62Siebert, The rnderground Railroad. 105-6. 
=63Ib., 108. 



254 XORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

not perform its constitutional duty of returning the fugitives.'"" 
As I liave remarked, and as Professor Siebert points out, the loss 
to the South can never be definitely known. It is certain that hun- 
dreds of thousands escaped, and that millions of dollars were lost 
by Southerners. Noi-thern men falsified the census in the two im- 
portant years of 1850 and 1860, to co^ver up the facts touching these 
depredations. These two acts are among the strongest possible ad- 
missions of guilt. They either changed or neglected the facts of 
these two censuses and made them to show a decrease in escapes and 
abductions of slaves from the South, whereas the truth was that 
they had been on the increase. , Prof. Siebert says, "The concur- 
rence of evidence from sources other than census reports, and the 
agreement therewith of part of the evidence gathered from these 
reports themselveB, constrain one to say that those who compiled 
the statistics on fugitive slaves did not secure the facts in full; and 
the complaints of large losses sustained by slave-owners through 
the befriending of fugitive slaves by jSTorthern people, frequently 
made by Southern representatives in Congress and by the South 
generally, were not without sufficient foundation.'""' And again he 
says, "The censuses are not only opposed to the evidence, they are 
on their face inadequate."""' 

I may well conclude what is here said on this subject in Prof. 
Siebert's words : "Can it be thought strange that the disappearance 
week by week and month by month of valuable slaves over the un- 
known routes of the underground system should have produced 
wrath, suspicion, and hostility in the minds of people who coidd 
justly claim to have a constitutional guarantee, the laws of Con- 
gress, the decisions of the highest courts on their side ?'""' 

With this brief outline of the working of the imderground road, 
I treat it no further. In the next chapter of this work, we shall 
see somewhat more fully the methods of exciting the negroes them- 
selves ; and also something of the efforts of the emissaries to make 
the slaves a^ source of danger and a constant dread to the white 
people. 



''"^The Underground Railroad, Itro.. XI. 
"s'lb., 343. 

s«»Ib., 342; see also Ann. Rept. Am. Hist. Asso., 1895, Ho. Docs., Vol. LXII. 
99. 
*"The Underground Railroad, 342. 



XII. 

EXACERBATION AND PROSCRIPTION. 

Hand in hand with these '"underground" depredations against 
what, we have seen, the Constitution, Congress, and representative 
Northerners had recognized as valuable, legal property interests, 
went the dangerous seditious literature from the ISTortliern press. 
This literature began no less early than the underground road, and, 
as I shall show in the concluding part of what I have to say, in- 
creased in bitterness, in volume, and in boldness, as the war period 
approached. All these things combined to drive the Southern peo- 
ple, in the first place, to abandon efforts for emancipation; in the 
second, to pass restrictive laws and to enact anti-free negro meas- 
ures. 

March 6, 1818, United States Senator Smith, of South Carolina, 
gives important and imdisputed testimony as to the early injurious 
nature of abolition prints and publications. Just how long before 
tliis early date this Northern faction had resorted to this method, 
we do not certainly know; but it had by that time become notorious, 
and its beginning must have been near in time to the slave-stealing 
"underground" movement which had quietly and effectively become 
widespread even before 1818. Said Senator Smith, "But, there is 
another perpetual source of misrepresentation, which serves' to place 
it [slavery] in an odious light to strangers; it is the number of 
catch-penny prints and pamphlets that are published by persons 
who know no more about the condition of the slaves than the man 
in the moon. Go to a book store, and you meet prints hung up in 
some conspicuous place, in large capital letters, 'Portraiture of Do- 
mestic Slavery,' published in Philadelphia; or, 'The Horrors of 
Slavery,' published in Cambridge, and sold in Boston. These pam- 
phlets contain all the extraordinary cases collected on the high seas, 
in the West Indies, or the United States, together with such in- 
flammatory speeches of travelers, Avho have no other means of giv- 
ing to their writings interest, than by dealing in the marvelous; or 
of fanatic preachers, . . . calculated to inflame without being able 
to instruct . . ." 



256 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

The speaker then gives us a sample of the doctrine to be found 
in this class of publications. While abolition petitions were being 
imposed upon Congress, the Senator says that "some unknown hand 
laid on the desk of each Senator a pamphlet entitled 'The Horrors 
of Slavery, in two parts, by John Kenrick; sold in Boston, price 
twenty cents.' " Among other things advocated by the writer of 
this pamphlet was the doctrine that the Southern slaves be eman- 
cipated and colonized in Louisiana; and then he appealed to New 
England commercialism by declaring that this colony would afford 
a fine market for Northern manufactures !^°^ 

Now, watch the growth of this movement as we get its history 
from the highest sources in loth sections of the Union. Note that 
its paramount importance in interpreting the causes of secession, 
is that it was no mere agitation, or process of education, such as all 
parties or sects may properly pursue, but it was born of the spirit 
of the bloody French Eevolution : a remorseless disregard for law 
was its pivotal point, and mol) violence became its increasing resiilts. 
Napoleon Bonaparte gibbeted and bayoneted the mob spirit of 
France; Civil War satiated and quieted that phase of abolition 
which, as the history of its progress and results prove, became a no 
less dangerous mania. 

Feb., 1836, on the floor of the House of Eepresentatives, J. E. 
Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, admitted the existence of an incendiary 
Northern faction "hostile to our Southern brethren," who, aside 
from their "threats of attack on life," threatened property value 
the character of which was communicated by the Constitution, 
which made "it a duty to guard it from violation.'"" The burden 
of his position was that this movement against the security of 
the South did not have the support of the Northern majority, which 
fact alone brought neither relief nor consolation to the besieged 
section. 

March 8, 1836, Senator Thomas Ewing, of Ohio, in an address 
before the Senate, said, "I am opposed to slavery, and think it a 
great evil in any community; and I believe such is the opinion of 
most of the reflecting men in the South, viewing the question in 
the abstract, without reference to any fixed and settled condition 

"'Benton's Abridgment Cong. Debates, Vol. VI., 37-8. 
""Appd. Cong. Globe, 24 Cong., 1 sess., 400-1. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 357 

of society. ... I have said that I thought the Abolitionists, even 
those moderate and rational ones whom we have among us [in Ohio], 
are doing evil instead of good; and I think further, if they could 
be convinced of this, they would cease to meet and petition on the 
subject. They do evii, in the first place, because their views and 
wishes cannot, in the eSstimation of the great body of the Southern 
people, he separated from those mad and reckless fanatics who at- 
tempt, by various devices, to excite insurrection among the slaves, 
and bring on all the horrors of a servile war.""'' 

Feb. 15, 1836, Senator John M. Niles, of Connecticut, on the 
floor of the Senate said, "Abolitionism consists of two kinds : aboli- 
tionism of the old school, and abolitionism of the new school. The 
former amoimts to nothing more than a rational wish and desire 
for the emancipation of all persons held in bondage, and a dis- 
position to advance that object by the diffusion of knowledge and 
the progress of society. Of this kind of Abolitionists were Frank- 
lin and Jefferson; and there are many such at the North, and I 
presume a,t the South. ... 

"Very different from these are the abolitionists of the new 
school. What are their principles? I judge of them from their 
own publications, which I have examined. They propose an im- 
mediate abolition of slaver}^, and against the will of those inter- 
ested in it. They, therefore, propose to abolish slavery by vio- 
lence. And this they design to effect in communities where they 
do not reside, and have no interestte or sympathies with the inhabi- 
tants. Whatever may be their intentions, no rational person can 
have a doubt that the scheme has a tendency to insurrection, 
massacre, and a servile war. 

"They regard slavery as a theological question. They say it is 
a sin and a moral evil in the sight oi God and man, and ought to 
be eradicated from the earth; and that it cannot be wrong to 
remove an evil. They aver that they have nothing to do with the 
consequences. 

"Can men be sane who avow principles like these, who are pur- 
suing an object having the most important bearing on the vital 
interests of society, which expose it to all the horrors of insur- 
rection, massacre, and servile war, and yet declare that they have 



"•App. Cong. Globe, 24 Cong., 1 sess., 220. 
17 



258 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

nothing to do with the consequences of "their own acts ? To call 
such men fanatics is too mild a term. I have no concern with 
their motives, but like all other moral agents, they must be held re- 
sponsible for the natural and obvious consequences of their own 
acts. This principle, true in morals, is no less so in politics. Is 
it to be wondered at that a scheme, based on a total recklessness 
of consequences, should have excited the almost universal indig- 
nation of an intelligent and moral people? . . . But there is 
reason to believe that there is one part of this scheme of Aboli- 
tion which hate been kept more out of sight — that is, amalgama- 
tion. Their first movements appear to have been directed to this 
object.""' 

Such is the prKBof of the existence of the danger — and the evi- 
dence, too, of men who were not in sympathy with slavery, and 
whose objects were to prove that this aggression was the work of a 
email ISTorthem minority. To this end Senator Niles presented a 
number of resolutions passed by various Northern gatlierings, at 
one of which the governor of Connecticut presided. Here are rep- 
resentative examples : 

"Resolved, That in view of these obvious principles, it is a vio- 
lation of the spirit of the Contetitution for citizens of one State to 
enter into combinations (to give more energy to their efforts) for 
the avowed object of effecting a change in the institutions, laws, 
or social relatioins of the people of other States, who, as regards 
all such matters, are as independent conmiunities as they would 
have been had they not entered into the Confederacy. 

"Resolved, That the conduct of the Abolition societies, in pub- 
lishing and distributing in the slave-holding States in violation 
of their laws, newspapers, and pamphlets, the natural and obvious 
tendency of which is to excite insubordination and insurrection 
among the slaves, and expose the country to all the horrors of a 
servile war, is highly censurable, and cannot fail of meeting the 
reprobation of every friend of his country.""' 

But protests of the North against the mad, reckless, and dan- 
gerous movement rapidly gathering in their midst, did not stop 
it; it swept on until it had become so bold and powerful that 



="App. Cong. Globe, 24 Cong., 1 ses.s., 115-124. 
"»App. Cong. Globe, 24 Cong., 1 sess., 115-125. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 359 

armed, organized rebellion laid waste our middle West; it finally 
paralyzed the arm of the nation's executive; it brought Congres- 
sional jDower not only under its dominion, but made it armed 
sedition's boldest champion. 

Let us now go back to the South and see the effect upon both 
classes of her people, and the conditions which the Northern move- 
ment produced. 

Contemporary with the decrease of the emancipation efforts in 
the South, we find the governors of the several Southern States 
calling attention to the results in the South of Northern aboli- 
tion efforts; we find legislatures enacting measures for protection 
or restraint; we find the people gathering in mass-meetings de- 
claring that danger existed and that its increase was threatened 
through the abolition efforts of the North. In 1826 Grov. Jolmson 
in his mes'sage to the legislature of Louisiana called the attention 
of that body to the "unconstitutional and dangerous," using his 
words, attitude of the abolition North towards Southern slavery, 
and pointed out that the methods used in the South by Northern 
abolitionists did not "subserve the intere'sts of am. enlightened 
philanthropy," because those methods incited the slaves to acts 
"which Avould necessarily bring down upon them calamities far 
greater than any which" existed.'" This was one year before the 
date (1827) which Mr. Dunn, a Northern historian, fixes for the 
beginning of the change in the Southern attitude toward slaves."* 
Much earlier (1786) than this we saw the underground movement 
be:ginning to gather momentum and extensiveness."' Follow the 
history, and as abolition efforts increase in extent, variety, and ef- 
fectiveness, the South is driven from one counter, defensive, mO'Ve 
to another in an effort to thwart dangerous aggressions. It was not 
until 1830 that Virginia, — which is generally taken as a representa- 
tive of that period of Southern legislation, — pafesed her restrictive 
laws, and forbade free negroes to meet to learn to read and write, 
and forbidding white persons to asisemble with such negroe0. 
Similar legislation, applicable also to slaves, was not pas'sed in Ala- 
bama until 1832.''° Up to this late period no State had been more 



="Chas. Gayarre, History Louisiana, Vol. IV., 651. 
"♦History Indiana, 190. 
""House Docs., Vol. LXIL, 396. 
'"Kent's Com., Vol. II., 253, 13th ed. 



260 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

liberal to maninnitted negroes than Virginia, as was seen from an 
early legislative provision in their favor quoted elsewhere. From 
the earliest time slaves could be set free and live among the whites 
and acquire property in Tennessee; but in 1831, she, too, found it 
necessary to her peace and security, to require freed negroes to be 
removed beyond the State."' 

Concerning the causes of the restrictive laws of the South, 
James Kent, among the first of America's great lawyer's, and N'ew 
York's greatest commentator, writing about the time they were 
being placed upon the statute books, said, "These several penal 
restrictions must have proceeded from the strong and fearful 
apprehension that the kind of knowledge and in'struction which are 
interdicted, would greatly increase the means, capacity, and ten- 
dency of slaves to combine for purposes of mischief and insurrec- 
tion. The great principle of self -protection," continues this great 
Northern lawyer, "doubtless demands, on the part of the white 
population dwelling in the midfet of such combustible materials, 
unceasing vigilance and firmness, as well as uniform kindness and 
humanity. The evils of domestic slavery are inevitable, but the 
responsibility does not rest upon the present generation, to whom 
the institution descended by inheritance. . . .'"" 

Moved by some open outburst of slaves against the whites, popu- 
lar assemblies now and then for years called unmistakable attention 
to the presence of the emissary and his work. For in'stance, one of 
the strongest expressions of Southern feeling is that which Greeley 
Bays was put into the form of a resolution at Clinton, Mis'sissippi, 
September 5, 1833 : 

"Resolved, That it is our decided opinion that any individual 
who dares to circulate, with a view to effectuate the designs of the 
Abolitionists, or any of the incendiary tracts or newspapers now in 
the course of transmission to this country, is honestly worthy, in 
the sight of God and man, of immediate death ; and we doubt not 
that such would be the punishment of any such offender in any 
part of the state of Mississippi where he may be found." 

Before 1835 the exciting seditious literature had become so pre- 
valent and so wide in its circulation, that sterling old President 



»"Ib., 258. 
"Mb.. 254. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 261 

Jackson, who stood for the Union like no other man in America, 
found, it necessary to address Congress and call their attention to 
''emissaries from foreign parts who have interfered in this matter'^ 
of Southern emancipation, as he mildly put it; and with reference 
to incendiary Northern literature he said, "I must invite your 
attention to the painful excitement produced in the South by 
attempts to circulate through tlie mails inflammatory appeals 
addressed to the passions of the 'slaves, in prints and various sorts 
of publications, calculated to stimulate tliem to insurrection and 
to produce all the horrors of a servile war."^^° A sack full of this 
literature at one time in this same year was discovered in the post- 
office at Charleston, S. Cr 

But the abolitionists doubled their energy, and by the next year, 
1836, the attempts to raise the negroes had reached all parts of 
every slave State. So dangero.us had they become that Gov. White, 
of Louisiana, called the attention of his legislature to the existence 
of the organizations that "printed and scattered 'collection of hor- 
rors and atrocities' which had no other reality than what was given 
to them by the heated brains of their inventors." The governor 
laid before the legislature a collection of these documents and fur- 
ther said, "They will suffice to give you a just idea of the kind of 
v.'-ar which is prepared in the bosom of our own country, against 
our peace, our fortunes, our lives, and those of our children.'"" 

Very much of the m^ost objectionable literature circulated 
throughout the South, especially in the earlier years of the aboli- 
tion agitation, is preserved only by description. A few inflamma- 
tory prints are yet extant, but most of the circular matter, pam- 
phlets, and papers are gone. We may get some idea of what was 
being done from the report of the American Anti- Slavery Society 
in 1837. The report shows that from the New York office alone, 
this organization published and distributed yearly over half a mil- 
lion copies of the f olloiwing : — 

Bound volumes 7,877 

^Tracts and pamphlets 47,350 

Circula,rs, etc., 4,100 

"GCompilation Mess, and Docs., Vol. III., 175 : Message Dec. 7, 1835. 
'soBurgess, The Middle Period, 271. 
=*iGayaiTe, History Louisiana, Vol. IV., 657. 



262 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

"Prints" 10,490 

Anti-Slavery Mag 9,000 

Slaves' Friend 131,050 

Human Rights 189,400 

Emancipator 217,167 

Mr. Burney, president of this society, says, "Other publications 
of similar charactei are issued by state societies or individuals." 
While the membership was not large in 1833, yet there were sev- 
eral of these State organizations busy scattering their literature, 
and so we may see that mirions o-f pamphlets, "prints," etc., went 
throughout the country. 

We get some idea of this vast literary production, when we are 
told by Mr. Bumey that the Slaves' Friend is "a small monthly 
tract, of neat appearance, intended principally for children and 
young persons, [and] ... is replete with facts relating to slavery, 
and with the accounts of hair-breadth escapes of slaves from their 
masters and pursuers that rarely fail to impart the most thrilling 
interest to its little readers." He says these were distributed both 
in "the free and the slave states." Of course, this "neat little 
monthly" was read to the slaves at every opportunity. It was 
"replete" — full — of "hair-breadth escapes." They were always 
ESCAPES, thus imbuing the mind with the idea that the run- 
away ALWAYS escaped. This monthly was the product of shrewd 
brains; it purported to be for children; the simple-minded slave 
could be more easily impressed with the idea that along the patli 
of escape thousands of friends awaited his coming, and stood 
ready to defend him with their lives if he would but start; the 
story had a suffering negro, full of bruises and uttering wails of 
anguish, fleeing from some scowling master with whip and brand- 
ing irons, thus leaving the impression on the minds of the white 
children of the North that such things were really characteristic of 
Southern slavery. Just such publications did more to give a false 
impression with reference to the slave's condition tlian a41 Ihe ab- 
stract books published on the subject. The "prints" were pictures, 
always overdrawn and misleading, such as "views of slavery in the 
South — a lynch court in the slave States — the scourging of Mr. 
Dresser by a vigilance committee in the public square in Nash- 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 263 

ville — the plundering of the postoffic© in Charleston, South Caro- 
lima, and the conflagration of part of its contents, etc., etc."°" 
Just what the "etc., etc." were, Mr. Burney failed to tell. But he 
tells enough to show the inflammatory character of the produc- 
tions. Dresser was represented as a martyr, being scourged for 
doing good, when anything the reverse was true; and the Southern 
people were represented as more lawless than other sections, — as 
people who reteorted to "lynch justice" and brutal intimidation. 

January 1, 1831, The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison's paper, 
one of the most uncompromising abolitionists the North ever pro- 
duced, has an article headed "Walker's Pamphlet," under which 
it editorially says, "The Legislature of ISTortli Carolina has lately 
been sitting with closed doors, in consequence of a message from 
the Governor relative to the above pamphlet. The South may rea- 
sonably be alarmed at the circulation of Mr. Walker's Appeal ; for 
a better promoter of insurrection was never sent forth to an op- 
pressed people. In a future number, we pj-opose to examine it, as 
also various editorial comments thereon — it being one of the most 
remarkable productions of the age. We ha\e already publicly dep- 
recated its spirit.""" 

In proof of the existence and circulation of such insurrectionary 
literature, and of various abolition productions, all of which tended 
in the same direction by the very force of agitation, I might quote 
numerous other writers, but I shall place in evidence at this time 
but one more. J. W. Moore, a prominent ISTew York nuthority, 
whose sympathies are entirely with the North, says, "The aboli- 
tion movement was vigorously prosecuted by means of newspapers, 
pamphlets, book's, jectures, etc., and was continued without ces- 
sation."^" 

There is perhaps not a reputable historian who would insist that 
in the early days Southern slavery could have been at once de- 
stroyed. All agree with President Lincoln when, speaking of 
slavery at the formation of the Constitution, be said, "They found 
slavery among them, and they left it among them because of the 
difficulty — the absolute impossibility — of its immediate removal."'*^ 



582Anti-SIavery Examiner, No. 8, 19, 23. 

5s=01d South (Meeting House) Leaflet, Boston, Mass., Vol. IV., 20. 

ssiThe American Cong., 336. 

585Nicholay and Hay, Lincoln, Comp. Works, Vol. I., 505. 



264 NOBTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

Tliis opinion he never changed,"" When did the time for its 
removal arise? In answer to this question, I submit that, when- 
ever it would have l)een, long before that time came, abolitionists — 
beginning with their agitation in the first Congress — had produced 
conditions which rendered emancipation in the South still less 
possible. To show this I am endeavoring to place cause and effect 
in their proper historical light, Not alone had the agitators a 
dangerous effect upon the slaves, but by their unrelenting scourge 
of the slaveholder for not doing immediately what all sober, sane 
men admitted could not be done at once, every sense of resentment 
characteristic of the best American manhood had been put in an 
indignant and antagonistic attitude. For as all admit, and as 
Moore says, from firr.t to last abolitionists "demanded the im- 
mediate abolition of slavery.'^'" 

So much for the anti-slaver}' literature which, — creative of dan- 
gerous conditions, — -was prior to and hence drove the South to 
inhibitive legislation. I<ater we shall see the aspect of this litera- 
ture just before the great frown, which it had excited, broke into 
the demoniacal laughter of fraternal war. 

Slaveholders could not consider the mere question of emancipa- 
tion. There was a consideration of vastly greater importance ; and 
that was as to what should be done with these freedmen. It was 
but. natural that the Sontherner looked to tlie North where the 
process of emancipation years before had begun. In determining 
when he might safely inaugurate a plan of ridding himself of what 
he admitted an un'lesiralle cond'tion, naturally he scrutinized the 
attitude of his Northern brothers toward free negroes and mulat- 
toes. What did he find? He saw (1) that during their slavery 
days the Northern people had restrictive laws no less rigorous than 
those of the South; (3) he saw that during all of her history the 
people of the North had shown less enlightened and less unselfish 
consideration for the negro than had the Southern people; (3) he 
was staggered by the fact that the very people who fought for the 
emancipation of the Southern slave with so much zeal, found the 
free negro unfit for the exercise of citizenship, — and more disap- 
pointing yet, he found his Northern pseudo-philanthropists generally 

'WBeU's Lincoln, 114, 132. 
''S'The Am. Cong.. 336. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 265 

uncompromisingly unwilling that free negroes should even dwell lu 
their States. Naturally the Southerner argued that if Northern 
States found anti-negro legislation necessary, and the free negro 
dangerous, a less desirable and more dangerous condition would 
result in the South if her millions should be freed in their then 
condition. It may be well to caution the young reader to keep in 
mind that the negro of the agitation period was not the negro as 
we know him to-day. If Northern States, Pennsylvania for in- 
stance, which forbade more than four slaves to as'semble, and which 
forbade them to carry arms,^^ where her slave population was never 
large, and at a time when white instigators to insurrection were 
unknown to her, needed such regulations, it is rather a wonder, 
than otherwise, that the South withstood the pressure of lier dense 
slave population so long. Similar laws in the South did not exist 
until long after Northern abolitionists had made them necessar5^ 
The question of emancipation was one wholly for each State, so 
gnaranteed by the Constitution, so declared repeatedly by Congress, 
and so acknowledged by Northern leader's. Southern slavery was no 
eonoern of the North, and the effort to force upon the Southern 
States conditions which almost the entire North itself spumed, was 
an offered indignity which has no parallel in the history of the 
world. 

Since it is a too common practice for a certain school of writers 
to catalogue what they call the "black laws" of the South ; and that, 
too, without showing their long prior prototypes of the North and 
those of the new Territories and States where New England influ- 
ences were strong, it will be necessary to see something more than 
I have elsewhere given of this hifetory in the several States. This 
will help us to determine how far the history of freedom in the 
North indicated that the people of the South would be the better 
with their millions of slaves turned into freemen. It will also help 
us to determine whether the Northern faction which finally and ac- 
cidentally became the party of emancipation, were really the unself- 
ish friends of the free negro. In the eyes of the world, since the 
North was mainly the home of that party, that section has credit 
for having taken an early enlightened moTal stand for oppressed 
humanity ; it is lauded as the champion of freedom ; it is crowned 



»*8Mem. Hist. Soc. Penn., Vol. I., 385. 



266 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

as the regal knight of the oppressed; it has gone forth under the 
color of unselfish battle for a degraded race as though moved by 
the dictates of a Christian conscience. How much of error, how- 
much of falsehood and hypocrisy, crouch under these claims, even 
a brief review of anti-negro legislation cannot fail to reveal. 

In Connecticut, in 1833, Chief -Justice Doggett held that free 
negroes were not citizens within the meaning of that term as used 
in the Co^nstitution of the United States. The legislature of the 
same Stat« enacted a law making it a penal offence to set up or es- 
tablish any school or literary institution for colored persons not in 
habitants of the State; and any negro coming to the State for in- 
struction could be forcibly removed therefrom. This was only two 
years after Virginia, for instance, had passed a law regulating the 
teaching of negroes. If it was dangerous to teach free negroes in 
Connecticut, which had no slave population to incite, who will say 
that Virginia's statute was not a necessity, surrounded as she was 
by great numbers of slaves in the midfet of whom were Northern 
white men clamjoring to fill their minds with deeds of violence? 

About the same time an able Pennsylvania authority held that 
the negro was not a citizen; and in that State as late as 1837 
negroes and mulattoes were denied the right of suffrage."* In 
nearly all the Northern States, declares Chancellor Kent, who 
wrote some years prior to the Civil War, the negro is an object of 
social and legal restraints. 

The Ohio school law of 1829, enacted by her legislature, declared 
that the public school system was for "white youth" only, and thus 
the negro was denied the right to be taught. Nor was this the re- 
sult of her Southern immigrants. Charles Moore, than whom none 
can speak with more authority, writing in 1901, said, "On the Mus- 
kingum and on Lake Erie New England colonies had been planted 
under such conditions and with such strength as to make New Eng- 
land ideas the dominant force throughout Ohio even to this day."°" 

Of the newer States where New England ideas and policy pre- 
vailed, Iowa refused, from the ratification of her first constitution, 
to allow negi-oes the elective franchise, or to treat them as entitled 
even to representation."' The constitution of Michigan, ratified in 



»8'6 Watts, 553. 

'""The Northwest Under Three Flags, 384. 

="Hough. Am. Consts . Vol. III., 368. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 267 

1835, forbade the enfranchisement of negroes;"" and by popular 
vote in 1850 she again refused the right of suffrage to the negro. '"^ 
Minnesota's first constitution made a similar discrimination in 
favor of white men, and by popular vote in 1855, 1865, and 1867 
the people declared the negro unfit for the exercise of citizenship; 
and the disability, under which they place him, was not removed 
until 1868.°°* By the co'nstitution of Nebraska only white citizens 
could vote, or "white persons of foreign birth," when naturalized.'" 

Connecticut by an early constitutional provision made and for 
many years continued a similar provision.'"" Neither did she make 
any effort for the education or betterment of the negroes. New Jer- 
sey's constitution of 1844 placed the elective franchise in the hands 
of the. whites alone; and not until 1875 were negroes placed upon 
political equality with the whites in that State.'*" In 1821 New 
York placed a suffrage provision in her constitution which practi- 
cally barred all negroes of suffrage rights. Before a negro could 
exercise the elective franchise she required him to own in his own 
right $250 worth of land, and if not bom in the State, he must have 
resided there for three years. This did not apply to white people. 
The question of equal suffrage to colored people was submitted to 
the people in 1846, again in 1860, and again in 1868, and each time 
refused by large majorities.''* 

Even in 1864, when Northern people, or those of Northern 
descent, came to establish a State constitution for Nevada, they 
provided that "white male citizens," not convicted of treason or 
felony, or who had not "voluntarily borne arms against the United 
States, or held civil or military office under the so-called Confed- 
erate States, or either of them," could exercise the right of Ameri- 
can citizenship."" Yet in her Declaration of Eights she declares "all 
men are by nature free and equal."°°° The constitution of no State 
shows more antipathy to the Southern slaveholder than this of Ne- 



=»2U. S. Ch. and Consts., 984. 

si'sib., 1016. 

»»*Hough, Am. Consts., VoL I. 

w'Ib., 829. 

=»«U. S. Ch. and Consts., 263. 

5«nb., 1315, 1325. 

»»8ib., 1353. 

=»»Ib., 853. 

"•"lb., 850. 



368 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

vada, o-r manifests more plainly the Northern prejudice against the 
Southern people. (See Art. XV.) Why? Because the North said 
the South should have given negroes equal rights. But when it 
came to a quefetion affecting their own interests, these same would- 
be-exemplars made assurance doubly sure and made it impossible 
not only for a negro to vote, but to hold any office whatever — not 
even oversee a public road."" I have several times called attention 
to the same proscriptions in favor of New England settlers in Kan- 
safe, Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois ; all of which were placed upon tlie 
statute books or incorporated in the fundamental laws of those 
respective States early in the first of the last century. Even the 
more recent years of legislation touching the unfortunate negro do 
not develop for the North any higher moral or civic consideration. 
Among the acts of the general assembly of Illinoi's, 1855-'56, we 
find: 

"If any negro or mulatto, bond or free, shall come into this State 
and remain ten days, with the evident intention of residing in the 
same, every such negro or mulatto shall be guilty of a high misde- 
meanor, and for the first offence shall be fined the sum of fifty dol- 
lars, to be recovered before any justice of the peace, iai the county 
where said negro or mulatto may be found. ... If said negro or 
mulatto shall be found guilty, and the fine assessed be not paid 
forthwith . . . said justice shall advertise said negro or mulatto . . . 
for. ten days, and on the day and at the place mentioned in said ad- 
vertisement, the said justice shall at PUBLIC AUCTION proceed 
to SELL said negro or mulatto to any person who will pay said 
fine and costs."""' Shade of. Lincoln! And is this the "awakened" 
conscience of Illinois? Dragged from his native home in Africa, 
the negro is denied a resting place and hath not where to lay his 
weary head in the enlightened days of 1855-'56 in the great State 
of Illinois. Concerning the same or a similar law which was in 
force in Illinois in 1853, Smith says, ". . . tliis law was unequaled 
for the anti-negro sentiment displayed." This law was sanctioned, 
too, by a large majority of the popular vote. "The prosecutor or 
informer was to have one-half of the money, the remainder was to 



«»ilb., 874. 

oo^Carey, The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign, 375 (1856) ; Hinsdale, The 
Old Northwest, 112, 344. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 269 

be used for the deserving poor.'"""^ "Mr. Jiidd, Senator from Cook 
and Lake counties, . . . moved to amend the title to read, 'An act to 
establish slavery in this State,' " in derision of the supporters of 
the measure. Illinois forgot that she had once employed negro 
slaves, and that many of her public buildings were built by slave 
labor, which had been hired from the master by the State under a 
special enactment of her legislature.""* Michigan, by her consti- 
tution of 1850, sanctioned and ratified by popular vote, refused the 
negro the right of citizenship. By statute she had forbidden negroes 
to reside in the State since April 13, 1837."°' In 1851 Indiana held 
a convention to revise her constiutution. In this convention a 
""tnotion that negroes vote at all elections was rejected by 122 to 1, 
receiving only the support of the one Free Soiler." This same 
constitution made all contracts with negroes or mulattoes void. 
And persons encouraging negroes to remain in the State were to 
]>e fined; and all negroes or mulattoes were forbidden to come into 
the State. "This article was submitted separately to the people; 
and Indiana in the autumn of 1851 signalized itself by decreeing 
negro exclusion by an enormous majority.'"""' About the same time 
Ohio revised her constitution, and by it negroes were again denied 
the right to vote, to "w^hich restriction there was scarcely no opposi- 
tion in the entire State. 

The first State in the Union to expel negroes from her borders 
by either legislation or fimdamental law, was Massachusetts. In 
1788 she passed a law expelling all free negroes. Commenting on 
this, Thomas, born in Ohio of negro and GTerman parentage, says, 
"But Massachusetts was not alone in this respect, for race proscrip- 
tion ran high in all the Korthem colonies. In fact, in many of 
them, persons of color could neither own property, make contracts, 
nor testify against white persons; and it is only within the last 
third of a century that many of these restriction.? have been re- 
moved."™' This was written in 1901, which places the removal of 
the proscriptions of which he speaks about 1870. After citing the 
Massachusetts statute in full, ]\roore adds that all negroes "were 



""^Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 335. 

«"ninsdale, Old Xortliwest, 344. 

'"'=2 Kent, 2.58, n. 

<>«8Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties, 336. 

•o'The Am. Negro, 414. 



270 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

required to depart in two months on penalty of being apprehended, 
whipped, and ordered to depart. The process and punishment 
could be renewed every two months." Then he also says, "Realizing 
the 'dead weight' already resting upon them in the body of their 
own free negroes (though comparatively small in number), they 
evidently thought it 'sagacious' to prevent any addition to it."""' 
Again he adds : "The reader will not fail to notice below, the arbi- 
trary and illegal extension of the statute, in its application to 'peo- 
ple of color, commonly called Mulattoes, presumed to come within 
the intention of the law." He then gives a published notice order- 
ing over two hundred negroes and mulattoes to leave the State in 
less than thirty days.""" In 1800 one-fourth of the negro members 
of the African Benevolent Society were driven out of the common- 
wealth."" The writer says he found tlie same notice in a Philadel- 
phia and also in two New York papers, all of which were earnestly 
striving that the expatriated creatures hear of their doom. The 
same act appears in "the revised edition [of Massachusetts laws] 
of 1807 without change." Again in 1831 the legislatnre became 
alarmed on account of free negroes, "the increase of a species of 
population, which threatened to become both injurious and bur- 
densome," and appointed a committee to report prohibitive laws."" 
The anti-negro laws were continued in the revised statute 
of 1825, and not before 1834 were they eifaced. Massachusetts 
never emancipated her slaves by either legislative or by funda- 
mental law ratified by her people. A single judge was found, who, 
on one occasion, declared that the words "all men are born free 
and equal" in her constitution might be used to declare the freedom 
of a girl who was suing in his court. The case grew out of a blow 
inflicted with a red-hot shovel in the hands of the irate wife of 
Col. Ashley, of Sheffield, Massachusetts."' Thife holding was clearly 
an error, but since it was already seen that the negro on Northern 
soil was an unprofitable servant, from that time slaves began to be 
manumitted or sold into slavery in other places. 



»»'Geo. H. Moore, History of Slavery in Mass. (Appletons, New York, 1866), 
230. 

•""lb., 231 to 236. 

«oib., 236, n. 1. 

•"lb., 238. 

•"Henry M. Field, D. D., Bright Slcies and Dark Shadows, 132-3. 



NORTHERN" REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 271 

ISTor did the New Englander lo&e his contempt for the unfor- 
tunate negro whesn far removed from tlie conservatism of his native 
soil. On the rich shores of the wonderful and varied region which 
is now California and Oregon, the New Englanders or their de- 
scendants opposed — not slavery — but the negro. Nature gave to 
this region from her most bountiful and delightful store — the god 
of fortune selected it as his home; its snow-crowued mountains, in- 
terspersed with valleys of unlimited productiveness; its streams 
whose piscatorial allurements are unsurpassed ; its forests of shapely 
firs; its treasures of gold and natural highways of commerce — all 
leave nothing for which the heart can repine. The New England 
poet caught the musical swell of the deep-rolling "Oregon" where 
now the Columbia go^es out to the ocean to bear back vessels of 
commerce second to none. Sure here we should find the "home of 
the brave and the land of the free." What is our surprise when we 
turn to the constitution of Oregon and read : 

"No free negrO' or niulatto, not residing in tJii's State at the time 
of this constitution, shall ever come, or reside, or be within this 
State; or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain 
any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by 
penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free negroes 
and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the State, and 
for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the State, 
or employ or harbor them therein.""^ This provision was sustained 
by an overwhelming majority at the adoption of the constitution 
in 1857, and to this day remains in the constitution of Oregon. 
No longer ago than about 1897 the now Eepublican State of Oregon 
by popular vote refused to expunge her organic code of this relic 
of New England barbarity. 

This negro sentiment made its appearance in Oregon about the 
sanue time her provisional constitution forbade slavery, which was 
either in 1843 or 1844.' The legislature of her provisional govern- 
ment in 1844 enacted a law which ordered all free negroes to depart 
from the Territory, and forbade the coming of others."* Mrs. 
Francefe Fuller Victor, who wrote most of the Oregon history in 
H. H. Bancroft's Works,"' is inclined to sneer at this proscription 



"»U. S. Ch. and Const., 1506. 

"«Hittel, History Cal., Vol. IV., 47. 

«i»W. A. Morris, A. B., Oregonian, Portland, Nov. 16, 1902. 



272 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of the negro as the work of the Southern immigrants or their chil- 
dren."" Her mistake is only too common with those whose early 
prejudices were determined by the sophistry of abolitionists peculiar 
to her native New England home. They forget that the expatria- 
tion of the negro began in Massachuset.ts, and gradually spread 
until in every Northern State the negro found almost universally 
only those to be his friends who could use him to accomplish end's 
in which his personal good had no consideration. 

In 1844 the few free negroes in Oregon liad given trouble by in- 
citing the Indians to criminal depredations. This induced the 
Southern-boTn members of the provisional legislature to incor- 
porate in their law's a clause providing for the removal of this 
source of danger. At that time Oregon embraced Washington, 
IdaJio, Montana, and the present State of Oregon; the region was 
yet infested by tribes of hostile and blood-thirsty natives. The two 
votes by Northern-born men who were members of the provisional 
legislature favored legalizing slavery in the Tferritory,"" so that in 
their legislative representatives the Northern immigrants at that 
time had little of which to be proud, so far as their position with 
reference to the negro was concerned. 

Take it as we may, the seven men, three of whom were North- 
em-born, who essayed to make laws for the thinly-settled and unor- 
ganized wilderness of our new northwest, as it was in 1844, — can- 
not be said to be representative of any prevailing local sentiment. 
But not so in 1857. When the constitutional convention met, talent, 
experience, and loyal patriotism had come together — men represen- 
tative of the thousands of their hardy and enterprising constitu- 
ency. Neither the representatives nor the people were unused to 
self-government; nor were they unfamiliar with the history of the 
negro both as a freeman and a slave. Of the fifty-nine members 
of this constitutional convention, twenty-seven were born in the 
South and in slave States ; thirty were born in the North and in 
free States ; Ireland and G-ermany were the respective homes of the 
other two."' In the eight free Northern States represented, anti- 
negro laws, of various degrees of severity, either then yet did exist 



""Bancroft's Works, Vol. XXIX., 439. 

""^W. H. Gray, History Oregon, 378. 

"8H. II. Bancroft's Works, Vol. XXX., 423. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 373 

or shortiy had existed. Elkins, of Peimsylvamia, is the mover and 
author of the Oregon anti-negro constitutional provision; he 
offered in the convention a resolution, "That a clause be inserted 
in the Constitiition to prohibit free negroes or mulattoes coming 
into or seti^ling in this State.""" Unfortiinately, the Journal does 
not give the individual vote upon tiiis resolution; but, as we have 
seen, it was incorporated in the constitution; and, since Northern 
men were in the majority, their failure to reject it, together with its 
origin in their ranks, leaves the responsibility with them. It was 
from a Southerner, Judge McBride, of Missouri, that the move- 
ment and resolution sprang to prohibit involuntary servitude. 
This had the support of only six Northern-born delegates"^ and 
four Southern men. This emancipation effort having failed, the 
convention provided in the constitution for a vote upon the slavery 
question, and it went to the people for primary determination. As 
far as disclosed, throughout the proceedings, that tendency, which 
had so strongly marked the New England immigrants in Ohio, Illi- 
nois, and the motives of Ma,ssachusetts and other Northern States, 
to expatiiate the free negro and establish a government for free 
white men only,— having regard alone to the welfare of the superiOT 
race,— predominated the actions of the Northern-born men m this 
convention. For instance. Smith, of New York, offered the reso- 
lution declaring, "That we, the representatives of the freemen of 
Oregon, in convention assembled, in their name, and by their 
authority," ordain the constitution;'" which language was adopted 
and passed into the organic law of tiie State. The vote upon this 
resolution is not given. This was meant to declare that negroes, 
mulattoe-s, and Chinamen, had no part in the government being 
formed by the convention; and this sentiment was ratified by the 

people. 

California has a record no less bitter toward the African race. 
Congress never created for her a Territorial government. From 
the tieaty of peace with Mexico at Gaudalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 
1848 Concrress took no action with reference to. California, except 
by act approved March 3, 1849, "the revenue laws were extended 

oixjournal Const. Conv., 42. 
'2ojournal, 61. 
«2ilb., 62. 
622Journal, 96. 
18 



274 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

over it, and it was erected into a collection district; but since no 
United States courts were in existence there it was provided that 
violations of the revenue laws should be prosecuted in the Supreme 
Court of Oregon or the district court of Louisiana, until Septem- 
ber 9, 1850, when California was admitted into the Union as a 
State/""^ During tliis time civil government oscillated between the 
military power inaugurated January 11, 1847, by Commodore 
Stockton by order of the President of the United States, and vari- 
ous local bodies. But the local authoritiefe did not forget to pro- 
vide against the coming of the free negro. The opposition to the 
free negro was approved by the people in the Constitution of 1849 
which made only whites competent voters. It was expressly de- 
clared by the constitutional convention that this discrimination 
was meant to apply to negi-oe's."* In 1858 "there was a renewal or 
attempted proscription against free negroes. A bill was introduced 
in the assembly of 1858 to prohibt the immigration to and resi- 
dence in'^ the State of free negroes or mulattoes, "which passed 
both houses.'""" That California, from the time our troops drove 
Spanish authority from her borders, was dominated by Northern- 
bom men is an unquestioned fact. Her Southern-born immigrants, 
during her formative period, had little weight in determining her 
laws or policy. i 

From the oldest New Etngland, to the newest northwestern State 
or Territory, all legislation looked solely, at least always pri- 
marily, to the interests of the white man ; but when it came to ques- 
tions concerning the South, with strange inconsistency, the North 
always insisted that the interests of the negro were paramount to 
the interests of the whites of the South. February 23, 1849, Hor- 
ace Mann severely arraigned the South because he insisted that no 
rights were accorded negroes in that section, and insisted that every 
possible oppression was used to stifle development. In his speech — 
which is representative of the many similar ones made by Northern 
representatives — in the lower House of Congress, he admitted that 
the then conditions of the Southern negroes were great improve- 
ments over their original conditions, but he said, "Has their condi- 



"^sReports of Committees, 36 Cong., VoL III., No. 508, Minority Report, 19. 
«"Hlttel. History Cal., VoL II., 761. 
««Ib., Vol. IV., 244. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 275 

tion resulted from any proposed plan, any well-digested, systema- 
tized measure, carefully thought out, and reasoned out, and in- 
tended for their benefit? Not at all. In all the Southern states 
and legislative records there is no trace of any such scheme. ... 
Even tlie dogs have professional trainers. But not one thing is 
done to bring out the qualities of manhood that lie buried in a 
slave.'"'" 

What do the statute books of the North say?. What "carefully 
thought-out and reasoned-out plan" do we find in the North- 
even in the newer North or even in the old Northwest in whose lap 
was born the Eepublican party, and from whose bosom emancipa- 
tion for the Southern slave drew much of its vitality ? NOTHING ; 
even the dog's had both a trainer and a kennel wherever the North- 
em white man found a home; but there, by fundamental law, by 
legislative enactment, and by popular decree, the negro was forbid- 
den even a kennel. 

The free negro was found to be a factor of danger and uneasiness 
all over the North. In New York or upon the shores of the Great 
Lakes he was feared. In Michigan, for intetance, a State without 
any direct or indirect white Southern immigration of any conse- 
quence, as late as 1834, the negroes whom native inhabitants 
had emancipated, together with some who had fled from the South, 
put Detroit in such a state of riot that the terror of a massacre at 
their hands required the presence of a company of soldiers to 
quell."'' So the question which constantly confronted the Soutliern 
people was, What shall we do with our slaves as we set them free? 
Both individuals and organizations were, during all the years, busy 
tiying to solve the problem. In 1816 the Kentucky Abolition So- 
ciety communicated a memorial to Congress in which they pomted 
to what was unquestionably a truth, saying "great numbers of slaves 
have been emancipated ... and it may be expected . . . from the 
spirit of benevolence that seems to be taking place among all classes 
of citizens, that the number will daily increase." Then they set 
forth the fact that these negroes and mulattoes which were bemg 
emancipated had been forbidden to come into and dwell in various 
Northern States, especially the newer ones; and, pomtmg to the 

«2«Cong. Globe, 1849. 
«"Cooley, History Mich., 213. 



276 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

crowded condition in the South, they called attention to the fact 
that these negroes had no opportunity to acquire homes, and no 
newer country to which they could go and secure homes or earn 
wages. Since the free negro was a dangerous factor in the North, 
he was an infinitely greater one among his fellows who were slaves — 
stimulated as he was by insurrectionary emissaries; therefore Con- 
gress was asked to set apart from some of her vast unoccupied terri- 
tory a country for the emancipated negro, to furnish transporta- 
tion to it, to assist him to start in life; and, not to turn him loose 
like the colony at Sierra Leone, but to keep him under Government 
supervision and tutelage until he could care for himself. Here was 
something practical; we have applied a similar system to the In- 
dian ; here was a proposition humane toward the negro, and helpful 
toward universal emancipation; here was a plan which interfered 
with the rights of no State or individual. Did Northern Congress- 
men champion the cause ? What did Congress say ? They endorsed 
the committee report which Said, "The committee can see no cause 
for the interference of the Government on this subject; they have 
consequently prepared a resolution which is respectfully submitted : 

"Eesolved, That the prayer of the petition ought not to be 
granted."""* Alone and unguided, the negro had not the "fitness or 
capacity" to provide for himself; under the strong arm of the gov- 
ernment, backed by a small per cent, of the millions spent on 
Indians, opportunities for safe emancipation should have been 
offered Southern masters. 

Since nothing of the kind was done, let us look again to the 
southward and open again the statute books of the several slave 
States. At the hands of some writers, few pages in history have 
been more distorted than the Southern slave code. The fact is, that 
from the first to this day, surprising philanthropic consideration 
has been accorded the colored race, as a whole, by the South. The 
great slave State of Louisiana stands a model in humane considera- 
tion of both slaves and free negroes. In 18S8 some effort was made 
to pass a bill excluding from that State free negroes. Insurrec- 
tionary negroes, incited by Northern whites, had already been, in 
no inconsiderable measure, successful in inciting the slaves to riot 
and murder. Here, then, was some excuse for such a provision ; no 



628Am. state Papers : Misc., VoL II., 279. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 277 

such excuse — no excuse whatever, in fact — could the free States 
give for their anti-negro laws. Promptly Louisiana's governor ve- 
toed the measure. The fact that no effort was made to pass the 
hill over his veto attests that he had a strong following of broad- 
minded and liberal Southerners. Down to the Civil War no such 
or similar bill ever went on the statute books of that State.'"' Ken- 
tucky and Missouri (1821) were the fir'st Southern States to pro- 
vide by fundamental law for the expatriation of the free negro."'" 
In the case of Missouri, I have already given the unquestioned evi- 
dence of Senator Benton, who proves that the agitation of the 
slavery question forced his State to such protective measures. Ko 
State in the Union could boast a more humane treatment, or a more 
generous provision by fundamental law, of and for the slave than 
Kentucky. From 1799 to the Civil War,— reaffirmed in 1850— 
the constitution of Kentucky declared that the legislature "shall 
have full power to pass such laws as may be necessary to oblige the 
owners of slaves to treat them with humanity; to provide for their 
necessary clothing and provision; to abstain from all injuries to 
them, extending to life or limb.""'^ "Full power to prevent slaves 
being brought into this State as merchandise," was also given her 
legislature."" Similar provisions are to be found in the slave code 
of Missouri, 

Not only do we not find the proscription of free negroes in Ala- 
bama, but we find her constitution of 1819 providing "to prevent 
slaves being brought into this State as merchandise'' and also to 
oblige owners of slaves to treat them with humanity, to provide for 
them necessary food and clothing, and to abstain from all injuries 
to them extending to life or limb. Section two of this constitution 
assessed the same penalty for depriving a slave of limb or life as 
that imposed if the offence had been committed "on a free white 
person, and on the like proof; except in the case of insurrection of 
such slaves.'"'^ These provisions stood the enforced laws of the 
State to the Civil War. 



^^'Gayarre, History Louisiana, Vol. IV., 651. 

«3oin 1818 Georgia passed a law to prevent free negroes emigrating to her 
borders : this law was much modified in 1824, and no return to the strict form 
was made until about 1860. 

«"Hough, Am. Consts., Vol. I., 463. 

632U. S. Ch. and Const., 665, 682. 

«38U. S. Ch. and Consts.. 44. 



278 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Elsewhere I have mentioned the liberal provisions of the Vir- 
ginia laws concerning both slaves and free negroes, and have pointed 
out that Virginia encouraged the manumission of slaves and re- 
quired the master on manumission to make certain provisions for his 
former servants. From the earliest day down to 1850 free negi'ftes- 
found both a home and a welcome in the Old Dominion. By 1850 
the insurrection spirit had been so deeply sown in her borders that 
it became necessary to follow the example set by her iSTorthern sis- 
ters years before, and in that year""' free negroes were required to 
leave the State. But this requirement was fortified by conditions 
exceedingly liberal to the negro. A detailed glance at this law must 
prove valuable. 

Ignoring the antecedents of Southern negro laws, even some of 
OUT English neighbors cry out in anguish against "that hideous 
slave code," as we hear so distinguished a man as our Canadian 
brother, Goldwin Smith, D. C. L., while purporting to write The 
Political History of the United States (McMillans, 1899). As he 
multiplies interrogatives instead of proof, or reaches general con- 
clusions through isolated and unrepresentative instances, and asks, 
"Why was Southern legislation a code of terror?" I cannot help 
but see the analogy of such argument to that error one would make 
should he, finding a corpse on the street, rush wildly around ex- 
claiming, "Why was this man murdered"? without inquiring intO' 
the facts to see whether tliere had been a justifiable or excusable 
Jiomicide merely, or a malicious, wilful, delibeTate, and felonious 
killing of such malice af o^rethought as really constituted murder. 

Just here, lest my younger readers misunderstand my object in 
calling attention to writers widely read tliroughout our land, let me 
again make emphatic the fact that one purpose of this monograph 
is to examine the credibility of what, for what of a more definite 
distinction, is recognized as the Nortliern version of the Civil War's 
causes and the rea'sons which underlay secession. Hence, I have 
sought to examine writers who are not only representative of that 
side, but who have entered our libraries, or our schools, or our 
homes, and whose teachings thus fall into minds often too busy to' 
examine assertions unaccompanied by evidence. I seek to stimu- 
late a spirit of wider research. 



•»*U. S. Ch. and Consts., 1928. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 279 

Now, if we even leave out of sight the real caiises of "that hideous 
slave code" and look beneath its mask to see what it really did do, 
much of its "terror" will be seen to have been the variest hallucina- 
tion. Take Virginia's negro laws, for instance, and this is well 
because they are generally treated as representative of Southern 
anti-negro legislation, and because no laws in the Sonth have been 
more anathametized or given a more distorted interpretation at the 
hands of history. ISTot until 1851 did her constitution make its first 
provisions authorizing the legislature to "pass laws for the relief of 
the commonwealth from the free negro population, by removal or 
otherwise" ; and provide that free negroes "heretofore emancipated" 
should forfeit their freedom by remaining in the State more than 
"tw^elve montlis after they became actually free." This same arti- 
cle provided that the legislature could neither emancipate living 
slaves nor their descndants yet to be born."' 

Following the path of the constitution, the code declared, "No 
free negro shall migrate into this State," except those on legal 
business for another perfeon, or one landing from a vessel on which 
he was a sailor, etc.; and also declared that emancipated negroes 
must abandon the State within a year. But we must not stop just 
there ; if we go a little f urtlier into these "hideous" codices we readily 
discover that the'se were not harsh measures aimed at the negro 
merely because he was a negro or because the legislature meant to 
stop emancipation; nor were they meant to expatriate free negroes 
regardless of conditions — ^not a particle more than the laws for the 
expatriation and incarceration of pirates are not laws against those 
who make no piratical record. The free negro in the South was given 
a chance, provided his record and character deserved it, — ^and no 
matter who he is, character and record must determine his immu- 
rdUj from the operations of all penal laws. That it was the dangerous 
free negro that these provisions in the Virginia laws were meant 
to touch, is evidenced by the fact that the code further provided 
that any free negro who could "produce satisfactory proof of 
his being of good character, sober, peaceable, orderly, and indus- 
trious," might be permitted by the court of any county or corpora- 
tion to remain in the State and reside in the said county or corpora- 
tion. Thus the law continued down to the Civil War."' That the 



M'Poore's Constitutions, 1928. 
"«Mayo's Guide (1860), 445. 



280 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

law was enforced only against the dangerous and exceptional char- 
acter — ^just as laws to-day are enforced against the dangerous high- 
wayman — is proven by the fact that, as shown by the Federal cen- 
sus of 1860, thousands and constaaitly increasing numbers of free 
negroes actually resided openly and notoriously throughout the 
length and breadth of Virginia. Thus, years after the legislative 
regulation and nine years after that of the constitution, we find 
safely domiciled under the laws oi the Old Dominion thousands of 
free negToes. 

So it will also be seen that that part of these same provisions 
which regulated the gathering of slaves for religious worship, or to 
learn to read and write, was not meant so much to prevent the 
proper exercise of such privileges, but was to prevent the gathering 
of numbers, and to prevent the parasitical work of these who had 
long been trying to reach the slave under the guise of religion to 
teach him that slave insurrections were "devoutly to be desired." 
This was the only way the South had of intercepting that slimy 
emissary who constantly accelerated his efforts to reach the slaves 
with prints insurrectionary in suggestion, or — worse yet — having 
pictures of white women in such relations to the negro ais that the 
suggestion was unmistakable,"" and which were necessarily incitive 
of that revolting crime for which, in New England not so exceed- 
ing long before, negroes were not only burned alive in the presence 
of their fellows, but where even an attempted assault upon a white 
woman sometimes produced a speedy cremation of the live negro.*" 

The importation of any negroes otlier than those already held 
under the laws of any State of the United States, was forever for- 
bidden by the constitution of the Eepublic of Texas, 1836, and the 
violation of the provision was declared piracy ."' jSTo stronger evi- 
dence was needed that tlie independence of Texas, or its annexa- 
tion to the Union, did not mean an increase other than by natural 
birth — ^a gro^wth not effected by territory, — in the number of slaves 
already upon the American continent. The fact that Mexico — and 
no one would think of having charity to accuse any Spanish people 
of that day of acting in any great national question from an en- 
lightened Christian philanthropy — found slavery so unprofitable 



«TN. Adams, D. D., View of Slavery (Boston, 1854), 108. 
«»New Jersey Hist. Cols., by Howe et als., 39. 
"S'Poore's Constitutions, 1760. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 281 

that she had abolished it, should have shown that other things be- 
sides a warm climate and soil productive of cotton, tobacco, or rice, 
must co-exist to establish and perpetuate negro slavery. 

It is a remarkable bit of history that some of the Southern States 
were last in the entire Union — ^except new States which .were ad- 
mitted later — ^to abrogate the free negro's right of suffrage. As 
late as 1835 free negroes voted in three Southern States. South 
Carolina was the last of these to disfranchise her large free colored 
population. The attitude which her white people assumed on that 
question is striking proof that the Southern whites meant to treat 
the negro fairly and to give him, as rapidly as the unavoidable con- 
ditions of society and economics w^O'uld allow, political and indus- 
trial opportunities. The history of tlie change which was made in 
1835 in South Carolina's fundamental law, helps us to see that 
slavery was regarded as an evil to be destroyed as rapidly as pos- 
sible ; and that there was no condition which even excused the mob 
methods of Northern abolitionists ; and also helps us to see that the 
proscriptions and disfranchisements of the Korth were not with- 
out influence upon the South. 

Up to the ratification of the constitution of 1835, South Caro- 
lina's free negroes had enjoyed the high privilege of the ballot for 
over half a. century ; it had been confirmed to them by the constitu- 
tion of 1825. One of the members of the convention of 1835, who 
was of that exceedingly few Southern men who held a different 
opinion, declared that "almost every one said slavery was a great 
evil.""" Manumissions were evidently removing the evil, because 
at that time some counties of the State had as many as three hun- 
dred free negro voters — a number by no means insignificant. This, 
it is well to remember, was long after the cotton-gin had made cot- 
ton the great slave staple. Delegate Gaston voiced no small senti- 
ment of the convention body which, it is fair to conclude, was 
largely representative of the entire people, when he declared that a 
person of color who possessed a free-hold, and who wa's an honest 
man, and "perhaps a Christian," "should not be politically excom- 
municated, and have an additional mark of degradation fixed upon 
him, solely on account of his color. Let them know they are a part 
of the body politic," he continued, "and they will feel an attach- 



"•Proceedings and Debates S. C. Const. Conv. of 1835 (Raleigh. 1836). 80. 



282 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

ment for the form of government, and have a fixed interest in the 
prosperity of the community, and will exercise an important influ- 
ence over the slaves.'"" On the other hand, it was argued : "The 
constitutional provisions of other States in the Confederacy are not 
binding on us, in the revision of our fundamental Charter ; but, in 
a matter of probable expediency, like the one now before us, the ex- 
ample of other States should fall with weight upon our minds." 
The speaker then referred to the "express exclusion" of free negroes 
from equal political rights in Connecticut, and pointed to the con- 
ditional suffrage of New York. "In Ohio," he proceeded, "a com- 
monwealth peopled chiefly by ISTew England, and partaking largely 
of its benevolent feelings toward this class of people, they are ex- 
pressly excluded from voting." Thus the attitude of the North had 
brought the Southerner to feel that if in those States where both 
the free-colored and the slave population were small, privileges to 
the negro must be curtailed, certainly "as a matter of probable expe- 
diency" the densely populated Southern States much more de- 
ijianded retrenchment. Considering the abolition war which, at 
that time, had long beeoi pelting down upon the South, the justness 
and firm manliness with which this body of representative South- 
erners handled the situation before them, is a matter of no little 
gratification. "These persons are deserving of some consideration," 
affirmed Shober.°" Said Giles, "We have the power and ought to 
devise some means of raising them from their degredation.""' 
Crudup declared that "no man could wish more than himself, to see 
the race of men in question raised from their degredation," but 
that he did not believe that their suffrage privilege at that time was 
hastening the desired end. This view, induced by the history of 
the North taken in connection with conditions then existing in 
South Carolina, actuated a small majority of the convention; and, 
reluctantly and with calm dignity, a close vote of 66 to 61 put it 
to a practical test. 

After speaking of the strong tendency toward manumission 
which pushed the anti-negro laws of the South further down tlie 
page of history than those of the North, Webster, in the United 



"»Ib., 


79. 


"=Ib., 


73. 


«"Ib., 


74. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 283 

States Senate, March 7, 1850, said, "I impute to the South no par- 
ticular selfish view in the change which has come over her. I im- 
pute to her certainly no dishonest view. It has followed those 
causes which always influence the human mind and operate upon 
it.""' 

Many instances might be given showing a strict enforcement by 
all the Southern States of those laws forbidding the enslavement of 
captured negroes, or those whose freedom followed by virtue of law. 
The decision of the Louisiana courts is most striking. "A slave 
was carried by the owner to France, where slavery was not tolerated, 
and under tlie operation of whose laws the slave became immedi- 
ately free, and was brought back to Louisiana, it was held that the 
slave being free for one moment in France, could not be reduced 
to slavery again in Louisiana.""^ 

In 1740 the Spaniards of St. Augustine instigated an insurrec- 
tion of negro slaves in South Carolina. The slaves assembled and 
began their march toward Florida where they had been promised 
protection, and where those who had fled had been harbored. "In 
their march they plundered and burned every house, killed the white 
people," and "for fifteen miles spread desolation through all the 
plantations on their way.'"' This insurrection led to a revision of 
the slave code, in which "more stringent provisions were made 
against the assembling of slaves and provisions against insurrec- 
tions, but in the main the amendments to the code were in the 
negro's favor." By this code "a penalty of five pounds currency was 
imposed upon any person wlio employed any slave in any work or 
labor (work of necessary occasions of the family only excepted) on 
the Lord's day, commonly called Sunday. The selling of strong 
liquor to the slaves was prohibited. Slaves were to be provided 
with sufficient clothing, covering, food; and in case any owner or 
person in charge of slaves neglected to make such provision, any 
neighboring justice, upon complaint, was required to inquire into 
the matter, and if the owner or person in charge failed to excul- 
pate himself from the charge, the justice might make such orders 
for the relief of the slaves as in his discretion he should think fit." 
Strict laws for preventing cruelty to slaves were a striking feature 



•"Works. Vol V., 337. 

"'Kent's Com., VoL II., 258, and cases there cited. 



284 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of this code ; the burden of proving his innocence was thrown upon 
the master in such charges — ^a remarkable provision in the negro's 
favor. ''By this act, also, the apparel of the slave was regulated, 
as were also the hours of labor. Owners were prohibited from 
working slaves more than fifteen hours in twenty-four from the 
25th of March to the 25th of September or more than fourteen 
hours in twenty-four from the 25th of September to the 25th of 
March." This code "remained substantially the law in regard to 
slaves during the continuance of the institution in South Carolina 
for one hundred and twenty years after, and its provisions in 
regard to the killing of negroes were repeatedly enforced. It was, 
however, so amended in 1821 as to provide that if any one should 
murder a slave he should suffer death without the benefit of clergy ; 
and if any one should kill a slave in sudden heat of passion, he 
should be fined not exceeding $500 and be imprisoned not exceed- 
ing six months. ... As late as 1853 two white men were convicted 
and executed under the provisions of the acts of 1740 and 1821 for 
killing a negro whose identity was not established, but who, under 
the act of 1740, was presumed to have been a slave.""' 

The official censuses of the United States contain what is, to my 
mind, some very striking proofs of the contention that the slavery 
conditions of the South were misrepresented. There can be no 
doubt of the fact that the Northern agitation fed strongly upon the 
prevalent stories of abuse and mistreatment to which it was claimed 
the Southern slaves were subjected. Very many recognized that 
restrictive laws such as that which existed in New York during 
slavery, which "forbade all assemblages of the numerous slaves, — 
for the slaveholding burghers werf haunted by the constant terror of 
a servile insurrection;""' or that in Pennsylvania, where not more 
than four slaves could meet at one time,"* were not abusive or tyran- 
nical. But Northerners, especially a very large and important class 
of women who became strong supporters of the underground rail- 
road, were moved by the representations of the books, periodicals, 
and lecturers concerning the personal misuse and abuse alleged to 
be received by the slaves at the hands of masters or overseers. A 



"•Annual Report Am. Hist. Ass'n 1895, House Documents, Vol. LXII., 657-8. 
"'Roosevelt, New York, in Historic Towns, 55. 
•"Memo. Penn. Hist. Soc, Vol. I., 385. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 285 

cringing negro, a scowling master — most likely that product of an 
over-zealous female mind, a Legree — bloodhounds, and a merciless 
whip were immediately suggested to a large number of Northern 
minds as soon as the word "slave" was seen or heard. As Webster 
pointed out in his famous seventh of March speech in Congres's in 
1850,"' so persistently had the Northern agitators distorted the 
truth that its correction had, most likely, ere then become impos- 
sible. In addition to the other evidence which I have presented in 
support of the contention that these agitators did use false state- 
ments with which the public was aroused, I desire to call attention 
to some things shown by the censuses of 1850 and 1860. So far as 
the facts with reference to slavery go, these two are the most im- 
portant of our national cen'suses. Whatever is shown in favor oi 
the South by these official returns, is entitled to considerable weight. 
Because, it is quite clear that an effort was made by some one con- 
nected with each of these reports, to show slavery in its most un- 
faivorable light. I have already quoted Siebert, who points most 
conclusively to the fact that the figures and statements concerning 
the escape of slaves from the South are inadequate and fall short 
of the real truth. 

The personal quarters of the slaves were second to those occupied^ 
by the laborer's of no other part of the world. The census of 1850 
tells us that the "homes of the negroes — on the average — are quite 
as good as those of the peasants and operatives generally in Europe, 
and better than those in Ireland — one house for every six slaves."'"" 
This was abo^ut the same as shown for the white people; and, with 
the exception of a small fraction of a single negro to the house, the 
same which maintained in the North long after freedom. 

The per cent, of growth in slave numbers is important. Take 
the census of 1850. This was an important year, because in the 
decade which it closed there was much ado ahout the increase of 
slavery. Look at the figures. In Virginia, for instance, in 1800 
the per cent, of slave increase was 17.84; in 1810 it was 13.54; in 
1850 it was only 5.21. That of Louisiana in 1820 was 99.26; but 
in 1850 it showed a decrease to 45.32. Kentucky went from 241.2' 
in a steady decline, except in 1840, to 15.75 in 1850. Mississippi 



6^5'Webster's Works, VoL V., 357. 
ssoStatistics, XL. 



286 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

fluctuated from 389.76 to 35.22 in 1850. Maryland went from 
2.52 to .7, nearly a standstill by 1850. Similarly in the other 
States. This shows that the more northerly of the Southern States 
were declining more rapidly in the per cent, of increase in their 
slave population ; and the decline over the entire country indicated 
that the slave population was rapidly approaching a point where 
the surplus would be unprofitable. This must have meant a cessa- 
tion of the inter-State trade in slaves, since each plantation was 
reaching a point where its own increase supplied its demands. In 
the census of 1860 attention was called to the fact that, "While 
slavery in North America extended, in 1775, from and including 
the Canadian provinces to Florida, its northern limit has been 
gradually contracting, while indicatiooas clearly point to its west- 
em termini, whiqh have doubtless been already attained." Hence, 
those who insisted that the Dred Scott, decision threatened to make 
slavery universal in the United States, simply disregarded all past 
history and the facts that were transpiring in their very midst. 
They excited a popular clamor by using false arguments. 

The number of free negroes in the slave States in 1850 is no les'^ 
surprising than important. Since Northern writers so frequently 
tell us of the "kidnapping of the free negro," we would hardly ex- 
pect to find one in the South. The anti-free negro laws passed by 
some of the Southern States, much later than similar laws in some 
of the Northern free States, had operated, unquestionably, to re- 
tard emancipation. But this was their result rather than to drive 
the freed negroes out of the respective States where such laws ex- 
isted. In 1850 the free negroes in Louisiana, for example, were 
17,462; in Virginia, 54,333; Maryland had 74,723, which was a 
greater number than were to be found in any free State. But a's 
predicted by the Kentucky emancipation society in the early part 
of the century, to which I have referred, in spite of the conditions 
unfavorable to liberation, emancipation held steadily on its way. 
Natural causes, as I have herein argued, were rapidly sweeping 
slavery from our continent; left to itself it would have gone much 
more rapidly. By the time of the census of 1860 manumissions 
had increased in per cent, double what they were in 1850. In the 
introduction, volume on population, of the census of 1860, we are 
told that "it appears that manumissions have greatly increased in 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 287 

number in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, 
ISTorth Carolina, and Tennessee," while in the other States, except 
Florida and Delaware, the increase was not so marked, but still 
showed progress. (Xv.) In Delaware, as we saw above, slavery 
had already about disappeared; and there was no indication that it 
could ever be made profitable there. In Maryland there were 83,942 
free blacks, showing that about one-half her slave population had 
been freed. All things pointed to an early disappearance of slavery ; 
and had it been let alone, before the Civil War natural cause would 
have driven it to the narrow regions of the cotton States, and there 
competition by the cotton countries of the world would soon have 
made it a matter of history. 

What are we to conclude? First, that the Southern people were 
more generous in their treatment of the negro than were the people 
of the I^orthem section; second, the proscriptive and restrictive 
laws concerning both slaves and free negrO'CS — laws declared neces- 
sary, sooner or later, by the greater mass of the American people — 
declare the unfitness of the negro for freedom at any time during 
the great agitation, and the more especially his unfitness for the ex- 
ercise of American citizenship. When did the time for the manu- 
mission of the Southern slaves arise ? Speaking of abolition during 
the war, Thomas, Ohio's native historian of negro race, an ex- 
Union officer of the Civil War, says, "The truth is that neither the 
white or the black people were prepared for the abolition of 
slavery.""'" Before this he declares : "Despite its barbarities, 
slavery MTOught a salutary formation in the negro race. It made 
rational men out of savage animals, and industrious serfs out of 
wanton idlers. It found the negro rioting in bigoted ignorance, 
and led him to the threshold of light and knowledge. It clothed 
nakedness in civilized habiliments, and taught a jungle idolater of 
Christ and immortality.""''^ No one deplores more than I the 
method — or any method of enslavement — of initiating this work, 
imposed upon the slave-owners of leading the African race to 
"Christ and immortality," but having found it on their hands, 
thrust there against their protest, is Thomas correct when he says 
that the work was not even accomplished by the Southern people 



•'^The Am. Negro, 44. 
"'lb., 21. 



288 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

a.t the time of the Civil War ? Speaking of the slaves as they were 
before and at the time of the war, Booker T. Washington, the great- 
est negro America has produced, declares they were "shiftle'ss, dense 
in intellect/' and "without ordinary intelligence/'"'^ True as tliis 
was at the time of the Civil War, it was truer in proportion as we 
go back towards the first efforts of Northern origin to force eman- 
cipation in the South. If not ready for freedom in 1862, infinitely 
less were they ready at any time prior thereto. Lincoln and all 
rightly thinking Northerners declared that the slaves were not 
ready for freedom at any time during the first years of the nation. 
And Lincoln always insisted that at no time was other than gradual 
emancipation, and by consent of the owners, legal, right, or advis- 
able for either side.'" In 1854 in one of the debates with Douglas, 
Lincoln said, "When Southern people tell us they are no more re- 
sponsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge tJie 
fact. When it is said that ... it is very difficult to get rid of it in 
any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. 
] surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know 
how to do myself. If all earthly power were given to me, I should 
not know what to do as to the existing institution.""' 

In common with this realization of the truth by the man of that 
awful hour, educated, influential negroes of to-day say that neither 
side w.as ready when the crisis came; unquestionably, then, the anti- 
slavery agitation, dragging with it its awful methods from the 
North, was a crusade of blind bigotry, or a fight in the interest of 
the most selfish aggrandizement. 

It is not my purpose at this time to enter into a discussion of 
the present race problem. It would be interesting to call attention 



«"The Future of the Am. Negro, 11. In 1856 or '57 T. R. R. Cobb, of Georgia, 
sent inquiries to the governors and leading politicians of the Northern free 
States, asking for accurate and reliable information as to the advancement and 
condition of the free negroes in the respective States. The information thus ob- 
tained, in the greater majority of instances, was discouraging to emancipation. 
He received answers from eleven States. Briefly their information was : Conn., 
"not thrifty," "immoral" ; N. J., "debased * * * generally indolent" ; Penn., 
"much deteriorated by freedom" ; Ind., "sent forty this year to Liberia * * * 
hope finally to get rid of all * * ♦ do not intend to have another negro or 
mulatto come into the State" ; 111., "thriftless, idle, vicious" ; N. J., "one-fourth 
criminals in State colored, while colored population is but one-twelfth." — Cohb, 
Sketches of Slavery, 202-3. 

«5*Beirs Lincoln, 119, 217. 

««Ib., 76. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 289 

to the fact that the proscription of the negro is as acnte among 
JSTorthern people to-day as ever in our history."" It wonld be in- 
structive to notice that even yet the negro is often refused employ- 
ment in tlie Xorth ; and that in Northern shops white men generally 
refuse to work by his side.'"" In the words of the great Southern edu- 
cator, "The time is not far distant when the world will begin to 
appreciate the real character of the burden that was imposed upon 
the South in giving the franchise to four millions of ignorant and 
impoverished ex-slave's. No people was ever before given such a 
problem to solve. History has blazed no path through the wilder- 
ness that could be followed.""'' With so few negroes that there was 
nothing to fear, the North held back ; but she thrust the problem 
upon the South, where "freemen were permitted tO' vote two years 
in advance of the time when most Northern negroes were granted 
suffrage," as Thomas says.""' Gen. S. C. Armstrong was born of 
missionary parents in the Hawaiian Islands ; his father was a Penn- 
sylvanian, and his mother a native of Massachusetts. He did 
valiant service for the Union in the Civil War, and perhaps no 
dozen Northern men have done a's much for the uplifting of the 
negro since the war as he. I would be glad to call him to the wit- 
ness stand and let him tell, for the benefit of those not familiar 
with his words, that from the very time Lee's soldiers were dis- 
banded, both whites and blacks of the South were "willing to do 
the fair thing."""" Then I wonld call again Booker T. Washington 
and have him tell, cumulative to this, as we hear him in his recent 
book, that, "There is almost no prejudice against the negroes in 
the South in matters of business, so far as the native whites are 
concerned ; . . . But too often when the white mechanic or factory- 
operative from the North gets a hold, the trades union soon fol- 
lows, and the negro is crowded to- the wall."""^ No one who did not 
spend in the South the first twenty-five years after the war can 
have a correct conception of the impoverished condition left to 
those who survived the war or who were soon to be born. Yet by 



s^'Henry M. Field (of Mass), D. D., Bright Sliies and Darli Shadows. 152. 
^"Booker T. Washington, The Future of the American Negro, 75. 76, 175. 

6381b.. 146. 

•■■59The Am. Negro, 306. 

•^'Twenty-two Years' Work of Hampton Inst, (for negroes and Indians), Vir- 
ginia. 3. 

""The Future of the Am. Negro, 78-9. 
19 



290 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

1890 there were "16,000 negro free schools of the So'uth — nearly 
2,000 in Virginia alone' — costing the ex-slave states nearly four 
millions of dollars a year in taxation.'""'" Of course, as may be seen 
from the various reports of education, the number of schools and 
their support by taxation or municipal aid, is now greatly in excess 
of this; but the showing O'f 1890 is the more remarkable because 
reached during the period of greatest embarra'ssment, and during 
the time when not only the negro contributed little to the expenses 
of taxation, but when as a productive factor he was of least force. 
But all these more recent phases of our history, I must dismiss to 
confine what I have to say to the ante-bellum period. 



662Xwenty-two Years of Hampton Institute, 9. 



XIII. 

UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF SLAVERY. 

DISREGARD OF ITS LESSONS BY NORTHERN ABOLITIONISTS. 

It should not be forgotten that the Southern people realized that 
the wrongs the}' were suffering were not only without a precedent in 
the world's history, but that that history refuted every argument of 
the abolitionist; he was left without legal or Constitutional 
authority at home and without justification in either ancient or 
modern history. The slavery history of the civilized world shows 
that legislation cannot make civilization, — that conscienti-ou's moral 
support must precede legislative decrees, — that legislation cannot 
anticipate what would otherwise come, except greater injury be 
done in the effort than would have resulted without it. Slavery has 
existed at certain political or moral stages of all peoples. In their 
own good time each i>eople saw it undesirable longer to continue the 
institution of slavery, either for purely economic reafeons or be- 
cause of an enlightened and Christianized conscience, or the two 
combined, it matters not which or how: the fact remains that the 
same causes were doing their work in America — unaided by Xorth- 
ern anti-slavery people. 

During the whole of the Anglo-Saxon period in England down 
as late as 1066, the sale and purchase of slaves publicly prevailed. 
The English historian, John Lingard, D. D., tells us that, "These 
unhappy men were sold like cattle in the market. ... To the im- 
portation of foreign slaves no impediment had ever been opposed; 
the export oi native slaves wa's forbidden under severe penalties. 
But habit and the pursuit of gain had taught the Northumbrians 
to bid defiance to all efforts of the legislature. Like the savages of 
Africa, they are said to have carried off, not only their own country- 
men, but even their friends and relatives, and to have sold them as 
slaves in the ports of the co'utinent. . . . Their agents traveled into 
all parts of the county; they were instructed to give the highest 
prices for females in a state of pregnancy. . . . This o.bstinacy 



292 NOBTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

yielded, hoAvever, not alone to the severity of the magistrates, but 
to the zeal of Wiilstan, Bishop of Worcester." For several years 
successively Wulstan preached on Sunday against this traffic, "until 
at last the meTchants were convinced by his reasons," so the histo- 
rian tells us, and renounced forever the trade.""' No injury was 
done the slaveholders; no' efforts were made to make war upon or 
to massacre them; yet one of the most debasing systems of slavery 
gave way forever without bloodshed and without jeopardizing the 
peace of a nation. 

It remained for the English, the sons of the sturdy Anglo-Sax- 
ons, to restore the traffiie, but in a much milder form, horrible even 
as it was. Not only was the traffic restored, but in her dependencies 
English subjects held slaves until 1833. England's first attempt 
to legislate the horrors of the slave trade out of existence was really 
in advance of the day. The world was not ready for the step. 
More harm was done than good. All any nation can do properly is 
to do what i's productive of most good and least harm. As Mr. 
Archibald Alison, F. R. S. E., the distinguished English historian, 
and others tell us, the opposition to this first English anti-slavery 
law, enacted June 11, 1806, pointed out that the world was not yet 
ready for the stroke ; and that the bill would increase the trade and 
double the horror^ of the slave field. Mr. Alison very clearly shows 
that such was the result. He says its effects were in the 'Tiighest 
degree deplorable." He then adds, "Never was a more striking ex- 
ample than this subject has afforded in its latter stages, of the im- 
portant truth that mere purity of intention is not sufficient in leg- 
islative measures, and that, unless human designs are carried into 
execution with the requisite degree of foresight and wi'sdom, they 
often become the source of the most heart-rending and irremediable 
calamities."™^ I cannot now enter into an examination of why this 
act of the English Parliament had so disastrous an effect more than 
to observe again that the world was not yet ready for the step, and 
that the withdrawal of the spacious English vessels from the trade 
gave to Spaniards an opportunity to convert their smaller crafts 
into the most inhuman of slavers. 



««3Hist. Eng. (London, 1875), VoL I., 212; E. A. Freeman, Oxford, M. A., 
Hon. D. C. L., LL.D., The Reign of Wm. Riifus. Vol. I., 310 ; Hallam, Middle 
Ages. Vol. III., 299, n. 5. 

e«<Hist. Europe, Vol. II., 498. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 



293 



By 1833 the public opinion of England was upon a different foot- 
ing." Many of the English sla,ve-owners lived in England, while 
their slaves lived away under overseers and in some of the 
English islands ; this separation of the master from his slaves led 
to far heavier yokes than tho'se imposed in the Southern States of 
the United States. The English conscience had had time to ex- 
pand unopposed, while the Englishman's purse was not robbed. 
Then, too, by that time the economic conditions of the English 
dependencies," and for that matter those of the most of the world, 
demanded a change of the lahor system. Charles Knight, also an 
English authority^ tells us that "every estate was encumbered and 
every planter embarrassed"— speaking of the English slaveholders 
of this period."'' To the same effect G-oldwin Smith, D. C. L., says 
the "declining profits of the planter'"'"' was rapidly forcing him to 
bankruptcy. These conditions had produced a change of sentiment 
generally, and accordingly such force of public opinion was brought 
to bear upon the government that Parliament, 1833, passed an act 
of general emancipation for the 800,000 negro slaves within the 
Briti'sh empire; "and twenty millions of pound sterling were ap- 
propriated to compensate the owners.'"*' 

It is a striking commentary on the moral attitude of the aboli- 
tion Korth that compensation to Southern slave-o\\Tiers was spurned 
by the Xorth with the most unbrotherly contempt— not until the 
war was in open outbreak was there any material effort in this direc- 
tion. Mr. Rhodes ha's said that the South wo-uld not have received 
compensation. This assertion has not a single fact of history to 
back it: the South would gladly have accepted emancipation if 
bankruptcy and other after-results had not stared her in the face. 

While the English Government did all it rea'sonably could to 
help its declining planters out of an embarrassing situation, yet the 
measure fonnd no little opposition, because it was argued by the 
planter that, gradual though emancipation was to be, he, neverthe- 
less, would be bankrupt because even the proposed change in the 
labor system was too sudden. For great numbers this proved too 
true. Upon the planters of Jamaica, and generally of the sugar- 



swHist. of England (London. 1865). VoL VIII.. 331. 

"""The United Kingdom, Vol. II., 370. 

""Montgomery, The Leading Facts of English History. 3.j4. 



294 NORTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

cane growers, in Knight's own words, the Emancipation Act "'eanie 
like a destroying blight."""'' J. Smitli Homanfe, some time corre- 
sponding secretary of the Chamber of Coanmerce, State of Xew 
York, writing in Harper Brothers' Commerce and Commercial 
Navigation in 1858, upon tlie effects of the English act in Jamaica, 
says, "Hitherto its history, since emancipation, has been discourag- 
ing to the friends of liberty. The negro on. whom the cultivation of 
the island depends has gradually retired from labor, and retro- 
graded in the social scale. ... It is the natural result of removing 
all restraint from a people low in civilization. . . . Already the 
enormous depreciation of property has caused the ruin of so many, 
that the name of Jamaica proprietor . . . ite now associated with 
poverty and distress.'"'" The act killed the trade of the British 
West India Islands, and for many years thereafter it remained com- 
paratively stationary."'" Cuba and Brazil took advantage of this 
situation. They increased their slave forces, and worked their 
slave's s6 hard to supply the shortage in the sugar supply which the 
decline of production on English plantations had produced, that 
their slaves were "worn down by their cruel taskmasters to the 
grave by a lingering process" which terminated the slave's life in 
about seven years."" 

The opposition toi the Parliamentary Act of 1833 prophe'sied 
these evils, and argued that while slavery was an economic evil, 
that yet it was one which would disappear from English soil by vir- 
tue of its self-limitation, and that, too, with less bad effect to both 
slave and master than thtfse effects which would, and that actually 
did, follow the law. They pointed to the disappearance of the most 
galling form of slavery from among the Anglo-Saxons. They 
pointed to the fact that slavery wore itself out with the "happiest 
effects in both Spain and Portugal.""" Europe furnished a strong 
example. "The Germans, in their primitive settlement," had 
slaves. "When they invaded the Roman Empire they found the 
same conditions established in all its provinces.""" "As society ad- 



'"■•'English Hist., Vol. VIIL, .331. 

'■•""Harper Brothers, New York, lb.. 1128. 

""Alison, Hist. Europe. Vol. II.. 499, n. - 

«"Ib.. 498; Turnbull, Cuba. 279. 

«"lb., 498. 

«"Hallam, Middle Ages, 196. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 295 

vancecl in Europe tlie nianimiission of skives became more fre- 
quent.'"'* Why ? As on English plantations the planters found it 
unprofitable as the intellectual and industrial advance of the world 
drove steadily on its course, as in America slavery yearly grew an 
economic burden, so, Hallam tells us, it was in Europe, where "in 
peace the industry of free laborers mu'st have been found more pro- 
ductive and better directed. Gradually their nimiber decreased, 
until by the middle of the fifteenth century in Italy slaves no longer 
existed.""' In some Grerman communities the greater part of the 
slave-peasants acquired their freedom before the middle of the thir- 
teenth century. While in other parts of Germany and Eastern 
Europe they remained in an easy "sort of villanage" until later days. 
Some years after the disappearance of the shameful slavery which 
had ecxisted in the days ol the good Wulstan, its institution, as well 
as the slave trade, had been re-establi'shed in England proper no 
less securely than in her several dependencies. Concerning this 
latter slavery in England proper, Thomas M, Cooley, LL. D., as is 
well known, some time a Ju'stice of the Supreme Court of Michi- 
gan, says, "It would be idle to attempt to follow the imperceptible 
steps by which involuntary servitude at length came to an end in 
England. It was never abolished by statute; and the time when 
slavery ceased altogether cannot be accurately determined. The 
causes were at work silently for centuries . . . they \^ere not the 
subject of agitation or controversy.""' From earliest times up to 
1771 masters brought negro slaves with them to England, and "re- 
moved them again without qiiestion," adds Cooley.'" In 1771 Lord 
Mansfield "with evident reluctance" delivered the opinion in what 
is knowTi as the Sommer'set Case, in which he held that "to bring 
a slave into England was to emancipate him." Of the practice 
prior to this decision Lord Stowell said, "The personal traffic in 
slaves resident in England had been as public and as authorized in 
London as in any of our West India Islands. They were sold on 
exchange, and other places of public resort, by parties themselves 
resident in Ijondon, and with as little reserve as they would have 



"■nb., 199. 
""lb.. 200. 

"""Constitutional Limitations. 360 ; see also Bancroft's Hist. United States, 
Vol. I., fh. .J. 
"■"lb.. 362. 



2dr> XOHTHERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

been in any of ooir \Ye&t India posses'sions. Such a state of things 
continued without imj^eachment from a very early period up to the 
€nd of the last century" — meaning up to the Sommerset Case."" 
Slavery had also disappeared from Scotland in the early part of 
the nineteenth century. Sweden prohibited the slave traffic in 1813, 
Holland in 1814; Portugal early restricted this trade; not far from 
the same time France entered the field with gradual restrictions; 
and Brazil followed in 1825, though slavery remained with her 
until since the close of the Civil War, up to which time her pro- 
hibitive laws were violated with the most audacious impunity by 
slave dealers and ship-owners from the Northern States of the 
United States. 

Whatever the causes which wTought these salutary and humane 
changes, they had nowhere produced an "irrepressible conflict" 
whose devastating path is marked by an innumerable host of white 
and silent sentries that keep relentless vigil over the entombed 
l)odies of multitudes of slaughtered human sacrifices, like that 
mournful army which must forever encamp thronghout our South- 
land, and who'se chiseled challenges must continue to halt us at 
the graves of gone yet never-to-be-forgotten loved ones. Of the 
causes which destroyed the slavery of older countries it is inter- 
esting to note that Macaulay"' says the chief thing was the Chris- 
tian religion; Mackintosh"'" attributed the cause's mainly to the 
"**humane spirit which breathes through the morality of the Gospel." 
Hume"*' finds the cause in the fact that the barons were convinced 
that the returns from their lands would be increased by the use 
of free labor ; which is substantially to declare that under advanced 
economic condition's slave labor in competition with free labor must 
«oon bring bankruptcy to the slaveholder. 

There was not only no reason why slavery in America should not 
pass from our soil in obedience to the same laws that had driven it 
from other — almost all other — countries, but it had gone from the 
North ; it was slowly yet surely dying from the Northwest ; it was 
already unprofitable in the upper South ;"'" and Carr tells us that 



"Hh.. 362, n. 3. 

•'"Hist. Eng.. c. 1. , 

•"Hist. Eng.. c. 4. 

•«Hist. Eng.. c. 23. 

•»='Sir Geo. Campbell. M. P.. White and Black ( N. Y.. 1879). 140. 



NOUTHEKN KEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 297 

in 1828 Missouri was credibl}' rejwrted as on the verge of passing 
an emancipation law. Yet in utter disregard of the teachings of 
the past, Northern abolitionists pursued such a course as checked 
the Missouri movement;"*^ and not this onl}^ but such a course with 
reference to the South in general as had the result which T have 
more than once mentioned. This mad attack of an impatient and 
self-serving Northern faction — which ]>ecame the cause of the strug- 
gle which followed, — wa's inexcusable, I feel I may again repeat, 
because in its incipiency it had neither moral nor political founda- 
tion ; in its adolescence it had become an insane fanaticism as dan- 
gerous to republican institutions as anarchy. That faction in the 
North who encouraged or aided the underground railroad; that 
element who aided, encouraged, or helped to carry on the Kansas 
rebellion; those who refused to desist their agitation in obedience 
to the rulings of the Supreme Court of the Union; the numbers 
who discarded the Constitution and nullified the laws of Congress 
passed pursuant thereto; they who attempted what must, un- 
checked, have led to wholesale mas'sacre of Southern whites — these 
and the combined efforts of all these produced Southern secession, 
and thus led to war. That fair-minded, far-sighted number in the 
North who neither aided nor encouraged any one or more of these, 
is free from the blood-guilt of that unpardonable struggle. Neither 
these latter nor their progeny will raise a cry of protest when, as 
one day will be done, an unprejudiced world will inscribe over the 
tomb of the pre-bellum North: "Thy brother's blood crieth from 
the earth." 

Nor will the apologist for the advocates of any of these causes 
succeed in justifying or excusing them until he proves that the 
Southern people were exempt from the universal law of progress. 
That onward sweep to higher social and political life, — be its im- 
petus Christianity, evolution, economic powers, or what it may, — 
the historian need not stop to inquire, — was most surely hurrying 
African slavery from the world; and it was doing so without war. 
To argue that the Southern people, in their position with reference 
to slavery, were endeav-oring to reverse nature; to' insist that their 
"peculiar civilization" "broke faith with the new order" for no 
higher reason than that which a Chinaman can assign for his 



»83Carr, Missouri, 175-6. 



298 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

dogged conservatism, merely "to keep faith with the old/"''* is to 
ignore the chronology of our history, and to deny the "funda- 
mental principle of economic activity," and to deny that "the 
economic nature of man is something absolute, in'separable from 
the very character of man/'"^ The South was no more averse to 
prosperity than the Xorth; tho question between the two sections 
was whether the acts of which the South complained were suffi- 
cient tO' combat, rather than aid the natural, inevitable develop- 
ment of the American people, and to what extent they imperiled 
peace and invited ruin to the Southland. 



•"Brown, Harvard Hist. Lectures, The Lower South, 112. 
"''Carl Bucher (Univ. Leipzig), Industrial Evolution, 1, 2. 



XIV. 

CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCES OF IMMINENT 
EVIL. 

CONNECTION BETWEEN LINCOLN'S ELECTION AND SECESSION — JOHN 
BROWN REPRESENTATIVE OF A LARGE AND DANGEROUS FACTION. 

During tlie turmoil and bitter criminations and re-criminations 
which preceded the South's exercise of that right to which the larger 
part of the nation had clung since the ratification of the Constitu- 
tion, now and then some one would accuse her of a desire to break 
away from the Union merely for the sake of setting up an inde- 
pendent republic. * No sane man then or now sincerely believed or 
believes such to have been true. The South asserted that only in 
the last resort and for imminent causes could or should the Union 
be declared dissolved. When the machinery of the Government 
fell into hands where it would be used, so far as could be seen, 
for the hopeless, contimied subversion of the Government itself; 
and where its use or failure to be used properly would produce evils, 
by no means ephemeral, either directly or indirectly, to prevent 
which the States had formed a cloteer Union, then there was left 
to the Southern States but two possible courses: ignoble endur- 
ance, or a resort to armed force. A resort to armed force offered 
also two alternatives : an effort to restore to their normal conditions 
the fimctions of the Government; or, a formal declaration that ex- 
isting condition's and imminent evils had dissolved the Union, ac- 
companied by a notification that the suffering members preferred 
to remain apart rather than wage aggressive war for correction of 
the subversion. The responsibilities for war are of the gravest 
character; a formal declaration of secession was not a declaration 
of war ; if war should come, a declaration by the Southern States 
that the existing conditions rendered them no longer under obliga- 
tions to the Government as administered by the abolitionists, left 
war's sickening responsibilities most certainly not upon the South. 
Numerous friends had the South in the Northern States ; and these 



300 XORTIIERX REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

generally, together with man)' patriotic Southerners, halted on the 
verge of action in hope that a remedy less severe than the with- 
drawal of allegiance might be found. These were not in doubt as 
to the right or justification of secession based upon the alleged 
causes; there was no question in the minds of the Southern people 
as to the legal or moral right of the action under the existing con- 
ditions. ^Vith some there was merely a difference of opinion as to 
how the evils might be best averted. But events hastened ; politi- 
cal intriguers and men insane from the intoxication of agitation 
drew across the sun of national happiness a sable curtain: on it 
wa's emblazoned the torch of the incendiary, and through its 
meshes percolated the innocent blood of assassinated victinxs. A 
majority in the South chose what they deemed the less of two 
evils, — a choice none the less heroic for want of final succes's. True 
to the fimdamental doctrine of proper majority rule, the voice of 
the Southern majority became the voice of the S6uth. 

Why this action of the South followed so closely upon the eleet- 
tion of Mr. Lincoln, is not always clearly understood. In his 
election, why did the South feel that her patience had reached its 
limit, and that further delay would be suicidal ? Why did she feel 
that a declaration of her future position was then and there justi- 
fiable, — and not merely justifiable, but required? 

(1) The rebellion in Kansas, backed as we have seen by the 
Xorth, had shown a determination on the part of Northern people 
to pursue and carry out their view by force of arms. (2) The in- 
crease of the operations of the underground slave-stealing system 
demonstrated a growing Northern faction bent on inciting the 
negro to discontent and violence. (3) The enactment of laws by ten 
Xorthem States, the purpose and effect of which were tO' destroy 
and combat the fugitive slave laws passed by Congress, demon- 
strated a determination on their part to nullify the Federal Con- 
stitution and to set at defiance the laws of Congress; more, these 
Northern anti-Federal laws destroyed the binding force of the 
Federal Constitution. The Southern people were by no means 
alone in this contention. In 1822, President John Quincy Adams 
laid down this rule : "But let us suppose the case of legislative acts 
of one or more States of this Union are passed, conflicting with 
acts of C'ongress, and commanding the resistance of their citizens 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 



301 



against them, and what ehe can be the result but war— civil war? 
xVnd is not that, de facto, a dissolution of the Union, so far as the 
resisting States are concerned?""" Again he said, "I therefore 
hold it a principle, without exception, that, whenever the consti- 
tuted authority of a State authorizes resistance to an,y act of Con- 
gress, or pronounces it unconstitutional, they do thereby declare 
themselves and their State quoad hoc out of the pale of the 
Union.'"'' When it is remembered that in some instances the anti- 
fugitive slave-law regnlatioas which they had put upon the statute 
books of the respective States, made a United States officer in the 
execution of the Federal law liable to incarceration in a State jail, 
no one can doubt that the so-called "liberty laws" met the condi- 
tions which Adams thus laid dowTi. (i) Thomas Jefferson's view 
of emancipation was that "It is still in our power to direct the 
process of emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such 
slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly." Quoting this 
view of Jefferson, Mr. Lincoln had repeatedly declared : "Mr. Jef- 
ferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power of emancipa- 
tion is in the Federal government. He spoke of Virginia, and, as 
to the power of emancipation, I speak of the slave-holding states 
only." The members of Lincoln's party in Congress had gone even 
further : they had declared the eternal, irrevocable perpetuation of 
the existing slavery. In his inaugural address Mr. Lincoln said, 
"I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution— which 
amendment, however, I have nof seen— has passed Congress, to 
the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with 
the domestic institutions of the slave States, including that of 
person's held to servige. To avoid misconsti-uction of what I have 
said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amend- 
ments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be im- 
plied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made 
expres's and irrevocable.""" Tlie existing slavery was to be ''irre- 
vocably" left, and with it was also to be left the so-called liberty 
laws of the various Northern States ; neither he as the incoming 
President nor his party in Congress intimated that the South 



«86Henry Adams, New England Federalism, 

«enb., 58. 

»88Beirs Lincoln, 198. 



302 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

should ha^'e even an effort at better protection than the pa'st had 
afforded. Just before the above statement he had said, "The fugi- 
tive slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppres- 
sion of the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, 
a's any law can ever be in a community where the moral, sense of 
the people imperfectly supports the law itself." In the same ad- 
dress he declared that "no right plainly written in the Constitu- 
tion" had been denied the Southern people. He and his party as- 
sumed the functions of government, declaring that complaints of 
the Southern people were "altogether artificial" and without "foun- 
dation in fact";""" and that there was no "reasonable cause for the 
apprehension" that the accession of a "Eepublican administration 
would endanger their property and their peace and personal se- 
curity.""'"' Though he repeatedly declared that the fugitive slave 
law of 1850 was Constitutional, — a right plainly written in tlie Con- 
stitution, — yet there could be no mistake that he meant to make no 
effort to deal with even those States which had passed laws making 
it criminal to obey the Federal law. These — the real menaces to 
American freedom — were to remain, — and thus receive his moral 
approval ! At the very time he uttered these words he had knowl- 
edge that ten Northern States had passed laws with no other object 
than to destroy the national fugitive slave lawte : a more powerful 
denial of a Constitutional right, the abrogation of the exercise of a 
"right fixed in the Constitution," could not be foimd short of open, 
actual war. IJe knew that the very backbone of his party in those 
States fostered a public sentiment which often rendered it impos- 
sible to enforce Congressional laws resting upon provisions which 
he admitted were "plainly Avritten in the Constitution." He had 
the history of the famous Burns fugitive slave case before him ; he 
knew that the manifestations of abolition feeling which this case 
excited were typical and representative of that cherished by a large, 
wealthy, and powerful faction. He waS fully aware that Northern 
rebellion against these Congressional laws hounded those who at- 
tempted to execute them, just as was done in the case of the pro- 
bate judge and United States commissioner who tried Burns. So 
persistently did the abolitionists besiege the legislature, that the 



•'"Bells Letters and Speeches of Lincoln, 184. 
""lb., 188. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 303 

judge was finally driven from his office, although it is admitted 
that "he had not dealt with this case dishonorably.""" This perse- 
cution of admittedly honorable men, and this rebellion against 
laws resting upon a plain provision of the Constitution, the pro- 
vision itteelf no less than the entire Constitution as well as the laws 
pursuant thereto, sustained by a majority of over two millions of 
the sovereign voters of the Union, — were notorious facts. Lincoln 
had before him that movement which had brought to its aid thou- 
sands of improved rifles, cannon, — organized and armed sedition 
against local government and rebellion against the Federal G-ov- 
ernment, — theft and murder until Kansas became a stench; he 
knew that the avowed purpose of this movement was to interfere 
with the legal institutions and internal affair's of the existing 
Southern States, — an attempt to throttle the control of the bona 
fide citizens over an institution which both he and his party de- 
clared they were willing to see "made express and irrevocable." 
By no means did these reach the end. In conclusion, I submit 
&ome facts which I maintain were conclusive evidence that the 
violations of these various admitted rights were rapidly gathering 
to their support the assassin as well as open and perhaps more hon- 
orable war. When the President and his Congressional majority 
refused to enforce all laws of the land, or sat with folded hands 
under a plea of inability, they not only allowed the dangers to go 
unchecked, but thus accelerated what was already imminent. 

(5) Judging by the position which Lincoln and his party had 
assumed with reference to Kansas questions and the Dred Scott 
decision, it was a legitimate and reasonable conclusion that the fight 
they were making was not to ameliorate the condition of the negro, 
but one which would continue to be prosecuted for ends entirely 
subversive of and regardless of existing laws, judicial decisions, or 
constitutions. Going back a few weeks to the platform upon which 
Lincoln was elected, we find this same party, then grown strong, 
reasserting the old balance of power theory of government — a 
theory which had fostered Northern opposition to the acquisition 
of all territory west of the Mississippi river — and with this doc- 
trine re-affirming the legal status of slavery thus : 



'"Schouler. Hist. V. S.. Vol. V., 295. Mr. Schouler tells us that Burns was 
kindly treated by his master, and that shortly after this fainous trial his free- 
dom was purchased and he returned to the North. lb.. Note. 



30-i NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

"Eesolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the 
States, and especially the right of eaeh State to order and control 
its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment ex- 
clusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the per- 
fection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we de- 
nounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State 
or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest 
of crimes.""^ 

To read this without connecting it with existing conditions, 
would seem to show that the Southern States had every assurance 
needed. The legality of their slavery was admitted ; and, as I have 
said, afterward the same party in Congress declared their willing- 
ness to perpetuate it; the State's exclusive right to control it was 
admitted ; but these stopped short of the trouble. The South was 
flooded with, insurrectionary literature, her internal peace had been 
stolen by interference outside her borders; each j-ear hundreds of 
thousands of dollars — not theoretically, but literally — were stolen 
by the increasing underground railroad ; and all this had been and 
continued to be fostered, encouraged, and protected by the ad- 
mittedly unconstitutional laws of the free States. All that this 
declaration did was to state the well-known legal status of slavery, 
and then not only to leave unchecked the insane Northern wave 
which had broken in bloody billows over the homes of Southern men 
in Kan'sas, but by force of its very narrowness it gave accelerated 
impetus to all classes and kinds of opposition to slavery — with 
results to which I shall soon call attention in conclusion. 

We have seen how events had placed Kanisas at the feet of the 
National Government. Questions affecting the rights of the States, 
questions involving the right of emigration to United States ■ ter- 
ritory with this property which was admitted to exist legally, had 
arisen. Theise questions must be decided some way, by some con- 
stituted and recognized authority. Our fathers had prepared for 
such an emergency, and for this purpose the Supreme Court of 
the United States had been established. The greatest of Northern 
Senators, Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, but ten years before 
Lincoln's partisan contention, said, "No higher judicial tribunal 
exists than the Supreme Court of the United States. ... It is the 



«"T. H. McKee. Platforms of AH Parties, 68. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 305 

expounder of fundamental principles of govermnent; it is the ap- 
pointed umpire on questions of the profoundest interest and most 
enduring consequences between conflicting sovereignties. The 
American people, if they are wise, will ever cherish it as their most 
valued possession, since its duration will be co-existent with that 
of the Constitution, of which it is the sole interpreter."''" -And 
again he said, "The judges [of the Supreme Court] are called upon 
to sit in judgment upon the acts of independent States ; they con- 
trol the will of sovereignties; they are liable to be exposed, there- 
fore, to the resentment of wounded sovereig-n pride; and from the 
very nature of our system, they are sometimes called on, also, to 
decide whether Congi-ess has not exceeded its constitutional 
limitfe."°°* This final arbiter of disputes between the States must 
decide in favor of the one side or the other : it had decided in favor 
of the Southern contention; and this contention and decision had 
been and continued to be 1)acked by a majority of the whole voting 
freemen of America. Here was the arbiter established by the sov- 
ereign power in the nation speaking, and the sovereign voice of the 
people themselves answered back in approval. If our government 
was anything whatever it was republican — democratic. ^Yhen the 
minority refused submission, that position was none other than 
revolutionary, was nothing less than incipient rebellion. . This 
was exactly what Lincoln and his party did ; and that he and his 
party were a minority of both tlie whole people and of the whole 
number of voters in the Union or in the States collectively, there 
can be no question, — and this was true even down to and after the 
withdrawal of the South. While the other parties avowed they 
would "abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United 
States on questions of constitutional law," Lincoln and his party 
plainly said that they would keep up the agitation until the Su- 
preme Court decided as they dictated. 

In Aug., 1856, and while the country anxiously awaited the Dred 
Scott decision, Lincoln said, "The Supreme Court of the United 
States is the tribunal to decide such a question, and we will sub- 
mit to its decisions ; and if you do also, there will be an end of the 
matter. Will you? If not, who are the disunionists — you or 



'"Webster's Works, Vol. IL, 402- 
«8<Ib., Vol. ni., 163. 
20 



306 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

we?"*" Most certainly he had in mind a political, non-agitative 
submission; no fair construction can get anything else out of his 
attitude. The country was bleeding from the restless tossing engen- 
dered by the questions before the court in the Dred Scott case. The 
court applied the remedy. It was unpalatable to the Lincoln peo- 
ple; no time was lost in breaking former pledgete. Hear him Oct. 
1, 1858 : "We oppose the Dred Scott decision in a certain way . . . 
not ... in any violent way to disturb the rights of property thus set- 
tled ; but we oppose that decision as a political rule." "The Presi- 
dent and Congress" were "not to be bound by it" ; and more, "we 
propose so resisting it as to have a reversal of it if we can, and a 
hew judicial rule established upon the subject.""" It was plain to 
see where this would lead. If it were their right to refuse to sub- 
mit until their views prevailed, it would have been equally the right 
of the opposition to do the same thing, and so aid infinitum. This 
position detetroyed the very foundation of the American Govern- 
ment. (See Notes for Northern action on Dred Scott case.) 

Ignoring the fact that nature, as I have pointed out, had de- 
creed that slavery could never become national, or even to any con- 
siderable extent approximately so, in area, Lincoln and his party 
excited the populace with the unfounded alarm that the Dred Scott 
decision was one of a series that would soon establish slavery in the 
then free States. This was clearly a political subterfuge by which 
it was hoped the Supreme Court would be forced to yield to popu- 
lar clamor until in the reversal of the Dred Scott decision it should 
be decided that Congress could not legalize slavery in a Territory 
nor permit the people thereof themselves to do so. Such a conten- 
tion meant that all future Territories should be settled largely by 
Northern men and their local polity shaped in accord with the gen- 
erally prevailing politids of New England ; and the groundless rea- 
son urged before the people served to give the unthinking anti- 
slavery populace moral support in the belief that slavery was to be 
fought at "all hazards" and with any weapon. 

A true Southerner would be as unwilling to speak harshly of 
President Lincoln as of any honored and distinguished man. Lin- 
coln was not only born south of Mason and Dixon line, but his 



••'Bell's Lincoln, 93. 
•••lb., 128-9. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 307 

grandfather was a Virginian. His earlier ancestors were Quakers 
who came originally from Europe to Berks county, Pennsylvania.'" 
Of his sterling manhood and unfeigned Southern chivalry, the 
Southern people have a sincere appreciation. We recognize his 
honesty of purpose. Our recognition of his rugged manhood, how- 
ever, does not blind us to the sophistry of his logic and the conse- 
quent unsoundness of his conclusions ; nor cause us to lose sight of 
the unyielding and fanatical tenacity with which he clung to those 
conclusions — thus exhibiting all the peculiar, erratic, characteris- 
ticts of his Quaker ancestry. In reply to Judge Stephen A. Doug- 
las, Mr. Lincoln thus stated the contention and position upon which 
he went into power : 

"The judge alludes very often in the course of his remarks to the 
exclusive right which the States have to decide the whole thing for 
themselves. I agree with him very readily that the different States 
have that right. He is but fighting a man of straw when he assumes 
that I am contending against the right of the Statefe to do as they 
please about it. Our controversy with him is in regard to the new 
Territories. We agree that when the States come in as States they 
have the right and the power to do as they please. We have no 
power as citizen^ of the free States, or in our federal capacity as 
members of the Federal Union through the General Government, 
to disturb slavery in the States where it exists. We profess con- 
stantly that we have no more inclination than belief in the 
power of the government to disturb it ; yet we are driven constantly 
to defend ourselves from the assumption that we are warring upon 
the rights of the States. What I insist upon is, that the new Terri- 
tories shall be kept free from it while in the territorial condition. 
Judge Douglas assumes that we have no interest in them — that we 
have no right whatever to interfere. I think we have some inter- 
est. I think that as white men we have. Do we not wish for an 
outlet for our surplus population, if I may so express myself? Do 
we not feel an interest in getting to that outlet with such institu- 
tions as we would like to have prevail there ? . . . I am in favor of 
our new Territories being in such a condition that white men may 
find a home — may find some spot where they can better their con- 
dition — where they can settle upon new soil and better their condi- 



••'Nlcolay & Hoy's Lincoln's Works, 596. 



308 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

tion in life. I am in favor of this not merely (I must say it here as 
I have elsewhere) for our own people who are born among us, but 
an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over.""* 

That was exactly what the Southern people alleged to be unfair, 
and the position of which they complained. In the Dred Scott ca.^e 
the Supreme Court, the arbiter of la'st resort, had said jurisdiction 
of slavery should and did rest with the territorial government just 
as it did, as Lincoln and his party admitted, with the State govern- 
ments. Every Territory in the Union up to 1860 — Xorth and 
South — had exercised jurisdiction over and at will legalized or re- 
jected slavery. To keep slaveholders and their property away until 
Statehood, meant, of course, to give the anti-negro party a clear 
field. It simply di'scriminated against Southern people and 
hemmed them within narrow and old existing borders, while it gave 
an "outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over,'' — pro- 
vided they were not Southern slaveholders. In effect, this was what 
the Supreme Court said was contrary to the Constitution and out 
of harmony with the spirit of our government; and this judicial 
opinion was reflected by a majority in Congress for ten year^, and 
sanctioned by a majority of nearly one million popular votes in the 
election of 1860. Webster, whom the aSTorth called the great De- 
fender because of his watchfulness of the Constitution, said : 

"We must take the meaning of the Constitution as it has been 
solemnly fixed, — fixed by practice,, fixed by successive acts of Con- 
gress, fixed by solemn judicial decision, — or we never shall have any 
settled meaning at all. It is absurd to say, that no precedent, no 
practice, no judicial decision, no assent of successive legislators, nor 
all these together, can fix the meaning of an article in the funda- 
mental law.""" 

I have given a brief outline of slave legislation in the several 
Territories in order to show that the meaning of the Constitution 
concerning Territorial as well as State jurisdiction had been "fixed 
by practice, fixed by successive acts of Congress,'' fixed "by assent 
of successive legislators," and finally "fixed by solemn judicial de- 
cision" ; all these together had united to determine the fundamental 
law. 



"•lb., 507-8. 

""•Works (Boston, 1860). Vol. II., 1«4. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 309 

Nebraska Territory was created at the same time as was Kansas. 
Popular sovereignty — the right of the people of the Territory to 
legalize or reject slavery, and determine all purely local interests, 
as their majority decreed — pertained to Nebraska just as it did to 
Kansas. Nebraska's Territorial government was organized and 
peaceably at work months before that of Kansas. Her prairies 
were as rich and her resources as varied as were those of Kansas. 
There was ample room there for "free whites/' and that, too, where 
the history of the Northwest had taught tliat slavery could not sur- 
vive. If Lincoln's party were sincere in their profession of a desire 
for a home for free white men, they should have gone to Nebraska. 
That they rushed past it and inf eteted Kansas with armed men ; that 
even before the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill money and or- 
ganizations were ready to crowd New Englanders into Kansas 
borders, will ever remain unimpeachable evidence that it was a 
political move in the interest of Northern power, — and a movement 
entirely devoid of any philanthropic outlook for the Southern 
slave, — not even the free negro or mulatto was to invade this new 
centre of American "freedom." The avowed purpose of Lincoln 
and his party was to seek a home and an outlet for themselves — for 
*'free white men" only; note his words — the negro was to be left 
in his bondage, while the excited scramble for the Territories, fed 
upon abuse of an institution which they said should be made irre- 
vocable, was left to go on unmolested to fire the brain of the white 
insurrectionists, and to engender repetitions of the Kansas scenes. 
We are not left to the words alone of Mr. Lincoln. In the plat- 
form of the party which nominated and elected him, they further 
declared, section one, that "all men are created equal." In section 
eleven of this same platform, they declared, "That Kansas should 
of right be immediately admitted a State under the Constitution 
recently formed and adopted by her people and accepted by the 
House of Eepresentatives." Just before this they branded the work 
of the authorized Kansas legislature as the "infamous Lecompton 
Constitution." Why did they stigmatize this Constitution as "in- 
famous?" For no other reason than that it refused to recognize 
the legal equalUy of the negro witJi the white man. The Southern 
people said that the inequality of the negro must be recognized to 
a certain extent for the protection of the higher class. What were 



310 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

the provisions of that Constitution which that party, which parades 
as the champion both of freedom and as the liberator of the slave, 
thus in its platform so unequivocally endorsed? The Constitution 
to which they referred was that one claimed to have been ratified 
by the people of Kansas October 4, 1859, and accepted by the House 
of Eepresentatives April 12, 1860/°" just a short time before the 
Eepublican convention. This Constitution declared the right of 
governments to create inequalities in that it created an in- 
equality — made a discrimination — against the negro and in favor 
of the abolitionists. It gave the elective franchise to "white male 
person's" only, and such only could hold office."" Thus again, as 
in the Eepublican-abolition endorsed Topeka constitution, when it 
came to questions between himself and the negro, the Northern 
abolitionist drew back; and just as did Massachusetts and other 
older States of New England, jufet as did those who enforced the 
cruel expulsion laws of New England made Ohio, just as did the 
Northern element in the newer northwest — the great Oregon Terri- 
tory, a social and political inequality was declared in favor of the 
white man. The want of fairness did not stop at this position; 
even much more than a want of fairness was unmistakable. This 
Kansas constitution, which this party in its Chicago declaration 
of principles thus endorsed, was no more legal than the Topeka 
constitution — not a particle more than if it had been made in Ger- 
many and ratified by German citizens. By the law of Congress, ap- 
proved May 4, 1858, which was known as the English bill, the 
Lecompton or authorized constitution was declared republican and 
approved, and under it Kansas was admitted a State, without 
further act of Congress whatever, on the simple condition that this 
"ordinance formed at Lecompton" be re-submitted to a vote of the 
people, with which were some non-party conditions relating to 
public lands. The law provided that if by vote of the citizens of 
Kansas, or their failure to vote, this proposition was rejected, then, 
at any time thereafter, it empowered the people to hold proper elec- 
tions at which they should choose delegates to a constitutional con- 
vention, "whenever, and not before, it is ascertained by a census 
duly and legally taken that the population of the said Territory 



'•"Appendix Cong. Globe, 1 sess., 36 Cong., pt. 2, 
'»'U. S. Charts, and Consts., 636. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 311 

equals or exceeds the ratio of representation required for a member 
of the House of Eepreisentatives of the Congress of the United 
States; and whenever thereafter such delegates shall assemble in 
convention, they shall first determine by a vote whether it is the wish 
of the people of the proposed statiej to be admitted into the Union 
at that time.'""' It was admitted that neither had this cenfeus thus 
required been taken, nor was the population thus required in the 
Territory either at the time of the formation of this last constitu- 
tion or at the time it was being endorsed by the Eepublican con- 
vention,— nor had the law been repealed. To admit Kansas under 
this Constitution was to do so in defiance of existing Federal law. 
Thus another evidence was given the South of the contempt in 
which the laws of Congress were held by the anti-slaverv^ party 
whose candidate was just going to a position of great power and 
influence. 

Xot only was the position of Lincoln and the party which elected 
him ludicrously inconsistent, but the gravity of this very incon- 
sistency gave assurance to the abolition North and evidence to a 
fearful South that all the gross illegalities and interferences of the 
disturbing fanatic's would be continued. Boldly in Congress or 
before popular gatherings influential Northern leaders boasted of 
the Kansas record, predicted the invasion of the Southern States, 
declared tliat the interests of the white labor demanded immediate 
emancipation, and affii-med that unless the demands of this party 
were at once met they would be enforced hurriedly and with dis- 
aster and violence. March 3, 1858, in the Senate Mr. Sewurd said, 
"Free labor has at last apprehended its rights, its interests, its 
power, and its destiny ; and is organizing itself to assume the gov- 
ernment of the Eepublic. It will henceforth meet you boldly and 
resolutely here [in Congress] ; it will meet you everywher^-wher- 
ever you go to extend slavery. It has driven you back in California 
and in Kansas; it will invade you soon in Delaware, Maryland, 
Virginia, Missouri, and Texas. The invasion will l)e not merely 
harmless, but beneficial if you yield seasonably to its just and 
moderate demands. . . . The interests of the white race demand 
the ultimate emancipation of all men. Whether that consumma- 
tion shall be allowed to take effect, with needful and wise precau- 

'"App. Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 1 sess., 553. 



312 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

tions against, sudden change and disaster, or be hurried on by vio- 
lence, is all that remains for you to decide. . . . The white man 
needs this continent to labor upon. He must and will have it.""' 
Thus all things made it plain tliat in the coming administration 
as against the negro the Southern white man liad no security for 
his rights ; and that, on the other hand, as againtet the abolitionists 
and those who were fighting for what they called "a free State," 
the negro had no rights, — ^with reference to the New Englander or 
the emigrating abolitionist the negro was declared and held an 
inferior being who was not entitled to the pursuit of happiness or 
the exercise of political powers. In thite connection, let me look 
back again a moment at the important and significant record of 
the Lincoln party. 

■ 'The Thirty-fourth Congress was the first in which the Eepub- 
lican party, which was then soon to nominate Lincoln, began to 
secure ascendency. They had a majority in the House of Eepre- 
sentatives over the Democratic party, which was the party wlio 
favored the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and which had pledged itself to 
abide by the Constitution, the majority voice of the people, and to 
protect in their admitted rights the Southern people. This Con- 
gress h«ld its first session Decem'ber 3, 1855, and closed its last and 
third March 3, 1857. The Republican party and its representa- 
tives in this Congress endorsed what is known a's the Topeka con- 
stitution, and made a strong effort to admit Kansas a State under 
it, at the same time endorsing the rebellious government which had 
created the constitution. To this end they passed a bill through 
the House."" The position taken with, reference to the negro by 
this Lincoln-Eepublican endorsed Topeka constitution, gave the 
most conclusive evidence that this party was making a political 
fight against the South, and not a fight against slavery, and a fight 
wholly devoid of any Christian or enlightened consideration for 
the negro. Anything was indicated other than that they desired or 
were willing to give the negro equal opportunities with themselves 
or Northern emigrants. The Topeka constitution, the insurrec- 
tionary and rebellious legislature, and those who endorsed them, 



'•'Cong. Globe, 35 Cong., 1 sess.. Mch. 3, dated on 5th, 1858, 944 : App. C. O., 
36 Cong., 1 sess., 83. 

'•♦Spring. Hist. Kans., 77. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 313 

put themselves as strongly against the negro as against the slave- 
owners. Section one of the Topeka constitution begins by declar- 
ing : "All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain 
inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defend- 
ing life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, 
and seeking and obtaining happiness and safety."'"' No combina- 
tion of words ever carried a greater deception. The book from 
which I quote this is the compilation by Ben. Perley Poore, acting 
under an order of the United States Senate. It is as nearly an offi- 
cial collection of our charters and constitutions as any existing 
publication. But owing to a crafty manipulation at the hands of 
the Topeka constitutional convention, of the various fundamental 
provi'sions for their proposed State, that body managed to segre- 
gate the expatriation feature from the immediate wording of the 
Topeka constitution. The document accompanied by a memorial 
from the convention, was carried to Washington and presented to 
Congress by James Lane, of the Kansas insurgents. The document 
itself was in a mo'st depleted condition; its numerous erasures and 
interlineations were most unsightly. The signatures intended for 
the memorial accompanying the document were all in the same 
hand ;"' and altogether its appearance so belied its genuineness that 
its bearer had a hard time to convince Congress of its authenticity. 
He made an affidavit,"' saying that the phraseology of the so-called 
legislative memorial needed alteration, and that corrections and 
revisions were made by private parties after the adjournment of the 
convention. Xotwithstanding Mr. Poore did not find it in the 
wording which he gives, the anti-negro sentiment and force were 
unquestionably in the Topeka constitution. Prof. Spring, in 
Prof. Schudder's Commonwealth's Series, concerning the anti- 
negro features of this constitution, says that "though not literally 
a part of the constitution, would have the same effect as if they 
had been incorporated in it.""' Dr. Eichard Cordley, by no means 
Southern in his proclivities, before the Kansas Historical Society, 
in 1882, said, "... they proposed to exclude negroes as well as 
slavery from the territory. Thus was introduced into the platform 



»»»U. S. Chas. and Cons.. 580. 

'••App. Cong. Globe, 34 Cong., subj.: Kansas Affairs. 

"Hb., 383. 

"•Hist. Kansas, 76. 



314 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

of the free-State party that black-law plank which appears in all 
its after history, and which was the only serious blemish in the 
Topeka constitution. "'°° Governor Walker in his inaugural address 
to the Kansas citizens on May 27, 1857, said, "Those who oppose 
slavery in Kansas do not base their opposition upon any philan- 
thropic principles or any sympathy for the African race. For in 
their so-called constitution, formed at Topeka, they deem that en- 
tire race so inferior and degraded a's to exclude them all forever 
from Kansas, whether they be bond or free, thus depriving them of 
all rights here, and denying even that they can be citizens of the 
United States; for, if they are citizens, they coTild not constitu- 
tionally be exiled or excluded from Kansas. Yet such a clause, 
inserted in the Topeka constitution, wa's submitted by that conven- 
tion for a vote of the people, and ratified here by an overwhelming 
majority of the anti-slavery party.""" Another pro-Northern Kan- 
sas historian. Prof. Charles E. Tuttle, speaking of the vote on the 
several questions which were submitted by the Topeka constitu- 
tional convention to the free-State people, the question's being so 
put that the constitution as a whole might be adopted, or certain 
provisions thereof ratified or rejected, of which the expatriation of 
free colored people was one, says the constitution "had been printed 
and distributed freely/' so that all knew its several proposed pro- 
viisions and the several questions submitted to them along there- 
with. He then says that "on the question whether mulattoes and 
negroes shall be excluded from the territory . . . 2,231 ballots were 
cast, and only 453, or seven more than one-fifth of the number 
polled on that issue, favored the residence of free negroes and mu- 
lattoes in the territory. ... It -wnll be seen that more votes were 
polled on this question, for and against, than on any other issue.'"" 
Mr. Schouler admits the force of this anti-negro provision."' 
Hence, 1,778 philanthropic ( !) free-State men favored constitu- 
tional expulsion of — expatriation of — free men ! 

Eeferring to' the proceedings of the Topeka constitutional con- 



'""Kans. Hist. Cols., Vol. V., 44. 

"°Ib.. 339. 
- '"New Cent. Hist, of the State of Kansas (Madison, Wis., and Lawrence, Kan. 
1876), 279. 

"=Hist. U. S., Vol. v., p. 332. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 315 

vention, it will be seen that the anti-free negro provi'sion was 
managed as follows : 

The purpose for which the convention met was "to frame a con- 
stitution, adopted a bill of rights for the people of Kansas, and 
take all needful steps toward the foundation of a State government 
preparatory to the admisteion of Kansas into the Union." The 
delegates to this convention came together clothed with this 
authority by virtue of the express will of their constituency, the 
free-State-abolitionists."^ Pursuant to this authority from those 
they represented, the delegates met, adopted a bill of rights, a con- 
stitution, and ordered that at the same time and along with the 
constitution a vote be taken, "such vote to operate as instructions 
to the first general assembly," directing, if the majority vote so 
orders, "the passage of laws by the general assembly providing for 
the exclusion of free negroes from the State of Kansas."'" This 
was as much a part of the "foundation of a State government" as 
any act that that body performed ; it was done "preparatory to the 
admission of Kansas into the Union." Congress and the world 
thus had notice that the Topeka constitution came to them resting 
upon the expatriation of freemen as one of its primary corner- 
stones. 

This was the fundamental principle, let u's not forget, for which 
the Xorth had poured out her men and treasure; for which Eli 
Thayer, once a Massachusetts representative in C'ongrese, had 
passed "like a flaming meteor" throughout the Xorth ; it was the 
principle for which Eev. Theo. Parker took a Sunday collection 
in his church ; it wa's a recognized object in all the Kansas insur- 
rection. It was Lincoln's announced doctrine : "A home for free 
whites only." It was a diametrical contradiction to the first sec- 
tion of the Topeka document : "all men are Ijy nature free and inde- 
pendent" and "all men have the inalienable right to seek happi- 
ness and safety." Whatever else freedom may imply, no one can 
question that it includes a right to emigrate — a right to change 
allegiance from one country to another — a right e'stablished most 
certainly on behalf of free Americam and those from other juris- 
dictions who desire to become such, when we forced England at 



'See proceedings of convention in Evidence, 651. 
♦lb., 645. 



310 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

the mouth of the cannon and point of pike to sign the Treaty of 
Ghent in concluding the war of 1812. No less forcibly does liberty 
imply the right to change allegiance from one State in our Union 
to another, — to emigrate wherever the "pursuit of happiness" or 
the hunt for "safety" renders advisable or desirable. The denial 
of this right of emigration is the establishment of one important 
essential of slavery. A denial of this right of seeking domicile and 
"pursuit of happiness" or "safety" to any cla'ss of individuals is 
to recognize and establish an inequality; it is a declaration that 
some class has superior rights; it either negatives that "all men 
are created equal/' or admitting such, affirms that governments 
can and should create inequalities. To recognize that congenital 
inequalities exist; or that, in their discretion, governments may 
protect one class to the disparagement of another, is to aflSrm that 
that class in a community highest in the scale of social, intellect- 
ual, and moral development may protect itself regardless of the 
hardship imposed upon the less fortunate members of the social 
body. To admit the right of the survival of the fittelst — to admit 
that tlie superior class in a State, for instance, may be its own 
judge in bestowing social and political rights — is to admit the 
contention of the slave-holding South. The endor'sement by the 
North of the Topeka constitution and its fruits in Kansas, and 
their imqualified endorsement by the Lincoln party, brought that 
party in their selection of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency with none 
other than such admissions; and in a plight showing a battle 
against the South for Northern political supremacy, — regardless 
of existing laws, regardless of a yet majority supported Constitu- 
tion; and without the first page in that party's history containing 
a ray of hope to those of all people then moist in need of a friendly 
hand: the free negro; and as for the bondman, the clanking of 
his fetters, they declared, might irrevocably well an answering 
chorus to that more hopeless wail which rose from white-winged 
Northern slavers far out on the high seas. 

(6) The next great cause, which I shall mention, of secession 
was the full assurance of its necessity to prevent Northern-led 
slave uprisings with their inevitable murder and desecration of 
Southern homes. 

Slave insurrection as a means of intimidating the South was 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 317 

boldly threatened at least as early as 1812. Xorthern people then 
declared that the time would come when the Xorth would "appeal 
directly to her strength, and to the fears and iveal-ness of the coun- 
try of slaves/' Her people were besought "at every hazard to 
apply the needed remedy.'"" 

Prof. Siebert, Fred. Douglas, and some other writers, claim that 
the depredations of the underground railroad were a blessing to 
the South in that the dangerous and restless spirits were removed. 
Mr. Lincoln in his ante-bellum speeches contended that the dan- 
gers from slave uprisings were purely creatures of the imagination. 
Neither of these positions is correct. While a few of these negroes 
who were stolen or enticed away North were dangerous, yet the 
danger to the South lay in the lead of white Northerners, and the 
assurance of aid and sympathy Avhich the underground movement 
and the so-called personal liberty laws gave the negro. It was 
the lead of intelligent white Northerners, backed by Northern 
capital, contributed l)y numerous substantial Northern citizens, 
which made the danger to the Southern home and its inmates 
imminent and real. 

Stories of St. Domingo's fate at the hands of insurrectionary 
slaves, or the promise of protection and encouragement at the 
hands of white men, had, in many instances, given the South — 
not a theory, or conjecture, or hysterical fear, but evidence of what 
such things would lead her slaves to do. I need here to call atten- 
tion to only a few representative instances. I have mentioned the 
insurrection in South Carolina in which fifteen miles of country 
were laid in ashes and death dealt out to the helpless whites — the 
undoubted result of incitation by the Spanish then in Florida. 
An early one of importance was led by white men in 1800.'" In 
Southampton coimty, Virginia, in 1831, accompanied by six of 
his fellows, Nat Turner, a brainy negro with insane hallucinations, 
started to rouise the negroes to slay the whites. His band increased 
rapidly, "and in two days fifty-five white men were murdered." 
"Swiftly and stealthy as Indians, the black men passed from house 
to house, not pausing, not hesitating, as their terrible work went 
on, . . . that blow fell on man, woman, and child, — nothing that 

"'Pol. Pamp., Vol. ex.. Slave Rep., p. 1 : Lib. Cong. 
"•Richmond (Va.) Recorder, April 3. 6. and 9, 1803. 



318 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

had a white skin was spared.'"" In Louisiana "with the begin- 
ning of 1811 came another insurrection of the slaves of the parish 
of St. John the Baptist, thirty-six miles above New Orleans. It 
was as barbaric as it was picturesque and horrible. About five 
hundred of these half-savage people formed themselves into a 
column, and, with flags fl}ing, marched to the tune of wild music 
made by blowing into reed 'quills' and by beating upon iron ket- 
tles and other sonorous implementis. They moved directly toward 
Jsew Orleans, destroying the plantations in their way and forcing 
the slaves to join them.'"" After much excitement and damage, 
they were finally suppressed by the garrisons of Baton Rouge and 
Port St. Charles. Of another occasion the same author says, 
"Eumor of the revel in St. Domingo had reached the ears of the 
slaves on the plantations of Louisiana; in the lonely parish of 
Pointe Ooupee the dusky half-savages planned a masteacre of thedr 
owners. The negroes outnumbered the whites in this parish, and 
its remote situation rendered the task an easy one, if but the secret 
could be kept until the bloWs were ready to fall. It is hard at 
this time [1888] to realize the awful nature of the peril hanging 
over the scattered and helpless families. The men and the chil- 
dren were to be killed outright ; the women were to be subjected to 
a fate an hundred-fold more horrible. Everything was ready, the 
plans all perfected, when by the merest chance (growing out of a 
disagreement among the leaders) the secret was divulged and the 
dreadful deed prevented.""' Not without influence on the minds 
of both classes were the results of the slave insurrection in the 
South African English colonies in 1823, where over 2,000 armed 
negroes, led by determined slaves, swept both citizens and soldiers 
before them, and spared neither man, woman, nor child. This, 
too, in an instance where the plot was discovered some hours before 
the outbreak of hostilities."" 

Encouraged by white leaders, and armed with modern guns or 
deadly pikes, the South knew that an uprising meant slaughter of 
the master and prostitution of the women and girls to a condition 



•"T. H. Higglnson, Travelers and Outlaws (Boston, 1889), p. 287. 

"*Maurice Thompson, The Story of Louisiana, 195. 

""lb., 144-5. 

•^''Joshua Bryant, Xegro Insur. in Demerara (Germantown, S. Af., 1824). 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 319 

the awfulness of which the mind refuses to picture. Under the 
then existing conditions, there can be no doubt that with every 
year this danger increased. John BrowTi's descent upon Harper's 
Ferry brought to light facts confirming this belief then enter- 
tained in the South. The South came to the conclusion that what 
is generally called secession was the most available method of 
checking and finally averting this impending evil. Be that as it 
may, the guilt and responsibility for the results lie upon those 
who brought about so dire a condition. 

The sequence of cause and effect may readily be traced through 
the Northern abolition-bom events which I have described, to 
what is known as ''John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry." Brown 
received hi's early prejudices against the South in the services of 
the underground road; the emigrant aid organizations produced, 
in large part, the Kansas rebellion; and the Kansas rebellion 
developed the recklessness and unbalanced thii^t for slaughter 
characteristic of Bro^^Ti from Pattowatomie to Harper's Ferry. 
The "liberty lajws" in nullification of the Constitution and certain 
laws of Congretes passed by virtue of the authority thereof, fos- 
tered a public sentiment without which white men would never 
have attempted to lead slave insurrections. The immediate results 
of Brown's Harper's Ferry affair do not warrant serious histori- 
cal attention. Brown and his few men, unbacked and alone, 
might be treated as insignificant figures. As the representatives 
of a numerous and dangerous class they become important. Brown 
gave the South an opportunity to confirm what she believed to be 
the real position of the North — that is, the position of such numer- 
ous and increasing body of influential Northerners that we can- 
not differentiate them from the North as a section; and hence as a 
section for them she became responsible. It was the develop- 
ments — the incidents — the manifestations, with which latter 
Brown had no personal connection — ^these make his "raid" of great 
evidential importance and of much significance in ante-bellum his- 
tory. 

If his work had been the unaided movement of a few fanatics, 
it would describe no serious place in history; but such it was not. 
The feculent Northern atmosphere had become fecund of mental 
abrasions capable of any degree of criminality. An insane mania 



320 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

was rapidly gathering headway. I believe tliis statenieut to be 
the unquestionable verdict of history. There was as much 
money, — there were men Math influence as powerful, — as were 
behind the Kansas insurrection, in aid or in sympathy with such 
movements as Brown's represented. They furnished thousands 
of guns, an army of men, and stood for years in Kansas success- 
fully against all opposition. What such men had done, could 
again be done. j\Iany of the men who helped the emigrant aid 
movement, which had more than once premeditated and planned 
murder,'"' and the entire Kansas rebellion, were the same men 
whose money and influence and personal encouragement helped 
Brown to initiate what was meant to be war — slave massacre of 
whites under the lead of jSTorthern whites. 

A few men, even one man, with money, brains, and tact at lead- 
ership, may subvert an entire section; in'stances are not wanting 
in which an entire nation has been thus moved. "More clearly 
than any other important event in our history it [the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill] was the work of one man — Douglas/' declares a 
historical lecturer'" at Harvard University in 1902. The reputed 
influence of Cutler of Maissachusetts before the Congress which 
passed the Ordinance of 1787, and many other similar instances 
might be cited. If such, then, be the power of one man, Avhat may 
we expect of many having a common purpose and working at the 
same time, — especially when the many are unscrupulous and have 
a perverted and excited popular feeling as a rich field of sympathy 
and support? That thefee conditions existed in increasing num- 
bers and imminence from the inception of the Northern rebellion 
in Kansas down to secession is proven : — 

(1) By the known character of the man permitted and aided 
to lead the initial onslaught. (3) By the fact that Brown and the 
scheme were the product of a faction sufficiently strong and capa- 
ble of doing the South irreparable damage; and that this i's true is 
attested by the prominence and ability of the men who aided and 
encouraged him, and by the character of the gatherings which 
listened to his appeals — no one or more of which made an effort to 
check the gathering storm. (3) By the fact that Brown was only 

'"Boston Transcript, Dec. 4, 1884. 
'"The Lower South, 103. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 321 

one among the many willing aggressive white NoTtheniei's who 
sought an opportunity to lead the slavefe in insurrection; and that 
the teachings of others besides Brown declaring the righteousness 
of slave insurrection received the endorsement of prominent offi- 
cials and other JSTorthern citizens. Thefee facts had unusual weight 
in coiniirming the South of impending, irreparable calamity. 
(4) The number and character of the white men who partici- 
pated in the attack at Harper's Ferry, showed that white leaders 
of ability were to be found, and that not among the ignorant and 
lowly, but from the intelligent and more or less well-to-do classes ; 
and the incidents of the attack were proof of the desperateness 
of the insurgents. (5) The most conclusive evidence of the wide- 
spread extent of the insurrection spirit was given by the numerous 
and continued demonstrations of sympathy and approval when 
the results of Harper's Ferry were known at the North. 

In conclusion, I shall call attention to the fact that the incen- 
diary-insurrectionists lost none of tlieir ardor nor ceased fro^m aaiy 
of their efforts even after Virginia put a just and righteous period 
to John Brown's career. Let me examine, in concise detail, the 
evidence supporting each one of these five counts. 

I. The knO'-wTi character of the man permitted, encouraged, and 
aided to lead the initial stroke. 

In the first place, it had been known for many years, through- 
out the North, that Brown was an open advocate of armed slave 
insurrection led by white men. It was a well-advertised fact that 
at one time he had gone abroad to study the methods of the brutal 
insurrectionists of Hayti and St. Domingo, and the fortifications 
of Europe, for the purpose of applying the knowledge gained to 
an open war of negro insurrection against the South."' It was 
known that he insisted that it was '^better that a whole generation 
should pass off the face of the earth, men, women, and children, — 
by a violent death,""* as in these axact words he declared, than that 
slavery should longer continue. It was kno-Roi that Brown "meant 
to attack slavery by force, in the States themselves, and to destroy 
it ... by the weapons and influences of war.""' It was notorious 



"^Saborn's Life of Brown. 
'2<lb., 122. 
«=Ib., 166. 
21 



332 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

that for more than ten years he had organized societies into which 
he had inducted both whites and blacks, the constitution of which 
taught and declared that "no jury can be found in the Northern 
States that would convict a man for defending his rights to the 
last extremity"; which simply meant tliat Northern juries would 
not respect the Federal laws regulating the return of fugitive 
slaves; and which taught that murder in resisting Federal man- 
dates and United States officers would go unpunished by a nulli- 
fying North. It was also a part of the busineiss of tliese societies 
to advise fleeing slaves to collect against their pursuers ready for 
murder, and "let the first blow given be the signal for all to 
engage, [and] do not your work by halves, but make clean work 
with your enemies." Nor might innocent and law-abiding white 
Northerners escape the clutches of these arch platters; the res- 
cuing party were thus counseled: "After effecting a rescue, if you 
are assailed, go into the houses of your most prominent and influ- 
ential white friends with yo.ur wives; and that will effectually 
fasten upon them the suspicion of being connected with you, and 
will compel them to make common cause with you, whether they 
would otherwise live up to their professions or not.""^ At Spring- 
field, Massachusetts, Jan. 15, 1851, in a single day. as many as 
forty Northern whites and blacks joined tliis organization, one 
other object of which wate to circulate among Soiithern slaves 
papers containing the above advice and instruction. 

What was Brown's pereonal character? It is quite natural to 
inquire whether he was a man who might be morally capable of 
such desperate and soul-sickening butchery as slave insurrection 
must mean. Some of his co-conspirators have endeavored to hide 
his blood-stained hands under the covering of "divine instrumen- 
tality." Such profane blasphemy is couched in such expressions 
as "servant and prophet of God" — his campaign "is now seen to 
have been an omen of his [Grod's] divine purpose"'" — "sainted 
hero" (Hinton, John Brown and His Men) — "a man of God" 
(Connelley). 

But we are not so much interested to know what others have 
said of his character and life, a's to hear what the deeds of his life 



""lb., 124, 127. 
T"Ib., 123. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 323 

have to tell. Early in the Kajisas rebellion we find him acting 
with the Northern insurgents. Sanborn, who wrote (in 1888) by 
authority of the Brown family, says, "Until Brown arrived on the 
scene in Kansas, few blows had been struck in the Lord's cause.''"" 
Brown began to strike; who fell victims to glut his scarce more 
fiendish greed of human gore? Jas. K. Hosmer, Ph. D., LL. D., 
of Minnesota, give's us this picture of these first blows : " . . . four 
sons, a son-in-laA\', aaid two others," together with old man Brown, 
went on a secret mission of vengeance. "Three Southern men, a 
father and two sons, named Doyle, men inoffensive, against whom 
no charge could be brought, were compelled, it was May 24, 1856, 
to go with them; and the three next morning were found mur- 
dered. The weapon evidently had been a short cutlass which 
Brown had brouglut with him from Ohio. A Southern man named 
Wilkinson, forced from his home in spite of the entreaties of his 
sick wife, was next day found murdered, evidently by the same 
means. The tale of victims still lacks one: he was found in Wil- 
liam Sherman, slain in like fashion. Like the Doyles, the other 
victims were blameless except in being from the South. Twenty- 
three years after, one of the band, Townsley, told the story, how 
the old man gave the signal and the sons and followers did the 
deeds, though in the case ol the older Doyle the old man himself 
did not withhold his hand"; and even the next morning hife "hands 
were still bloody from the fearful work.""" 

Lucien Carr, now of Massachusetts, of the men thus murdered, 
says they were "pieaceable settlers on the Pattowatomie.""" San- 
bom says these men were "notoriously bad." But this statement 
is overwhelmingly refuted. Even the heretofore oft-quoted Dr. 
Chas. Robinson admits their inoffensiveness. The Northern mem- 
bers of the Congressional investigating committee refufeed to enter 
an investigation as to the facts, notwithstanding an investigation 
was demanded, and notwithstanding Congress had specifically 
declared that one of the duties of this committee was to inquire 
into all disturbances touching personal, public, or private "rights, 
peace, and safety of the residentls of the said Territory.""' 

"»Llfe of John Brown, 181. 

'"A Short Hist. Miss. Valley (1901), 177-8. 

""Hist. Missouri, 251. 

""App'dix Coiig. G ue^ 1 sess., 34 Cong., 291, 636, 675, 690. 



324 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Evidence that Brown had either committed, incited, or abetted 
these sickening, brutal homicides, at the time and immediately 
went abroad in the North. Leading Northern people and the local 
representatives of the Northern press knew that this was Brown's 
method of dealing with the Southern people. It was widely 
known that he held to, and firmly sought aid to carry out, hi's grim 
purpose on a massive scale. "The fame of the man had gone before 
him," we are told in the biogi*aphy of one of his most ardent 
admirers."^ At the time Kansas had numerous correspondents of 
leading Nortliem papers, and thefee men kept the public informed 
concerning Bro-ROi's deadly purpose toward the South. They 
gloried in hi's purpose. Hinton says, "Most of the regular corre- 
spondents who were present in the Kansas fighting years — as Phil- 
lips, of the New York Tribune; Eedpatli, of the Missouri Demo- 
crat; William Hutchinson, S. F. Tappan, and William Winchell, 
of the New Yorh Times; John Henri Kagi, of the New York Post; 
Hugh Young, of the New York Tribune and Pennsylvania papers ; 
Anderson, of the Boston Advertiser^ and myself, of the Boston 
Traveler and Chicago Tribune, with a score of other . . . were ear- 
nest supporters of John Brown.""' Dr. Chafe. Eobinson's recent 
biographer. Prof. Frank W. Blackmar, University of Kansas, says 
of John Brown: "His Kansas record will not bear the enlightened 
touch of history ... no rational historian to-day can sanction the 
courtee he pursued in Kansas.""^ 

II. That Brown and his scheme were themselves results rather 
than causes — that they were the fruitage of Northern State nulli- 
fication, and that Brown was merely one of numerous leaders of a 
faction sufficiently large and powerful succes'sfully to wage a slave 
insurrection, is evidenced by the prominence and character of his 
aiders and abettors and the character of the various gathering's 
that listened with patient approval to his harangues. 

While preparing for his incurteion into the South to excite and 
arm the slaves to insurrection and murder, he visited miany lead- 
ing Northern men and cities. He had more or less sympathy and 
aid in each. He went to Chicago, to Rochester, to New York city, 



's^Prothingham, Life of Theo. Parker, 454. 

"3john Brown and His Men, 40. 

'»*Ann. Rep. Amer. Hist. Association, 1894, p. 218. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 335 

was a guest at the Astor House; to Boteton, where he was the 
guest of Judge Eussell and Dr. Thayer. He visited Geo. L. 
Stearns, and was the guest of Theo. Parker, at Concord, New 
Hampshire, As Hinton says, "All over the North, especially in 
the more active centres of Eepublican political activity, Jolin 
Brown found friendly sympathizers, a good deal of verbal encour- 
agement, and a small degree of pecuniary assistance. Yet no one 
who came in close contact with him could doubt but tliat he held 
firmly to a grim purpose, and that at some day, not far distant, 
he would probably be heard from by way of a direct attack on 
slavery. There never was any disguise" on Brown's part, he adds. 
There can be no question that a coinmittee of Massachusetts citi- 
zens furnished two hundred of the famous Sharp's rifled car- 
bines."° The attempt to shield the Emigrant Aid Company for 
its part in furnishing him the deadly munitions and implements 
of war, is the. variest quibble."" Nor can responsibility be avoided 
by the plea that it was not Imown exactly what use he would make 
of these guns. The fact is that he made no secret of the object for 
which he desired the gunls, — further than what seemed necessary 
to prevent knowledge of his plans reaching the South in such a 
v.ay as to put the intended victims on the guard. Mr. Frothing- 
ham, in his life of Theo, Parker, the well-known Boston minister, 
tells us that Bro^wn. went "to Kansas to operate against the slave 
power,""' The Kansas rebellion, — it is almost superfluous to add 
again, — was fostered, aided, and encouraged by men hostile to tlie 
South; many of the same men aided and made possible Brown's 
effort. The war in Kansas was to force the abolition of slavery, 
was the first move against tlie local government of Constitution- 
ally protected States; it was made the pretext, on the part of at 
least a dangerous number who would never have undertaken the 
move but for the sympathy which the excitement tliat had spnmg 
against the South out of the agitation, to excite the Southern slaves 
to murder the white people among whom they lived. So it was, 
using Frothingham's words, that Brown wanted the rifles "to carry 
the war, if advisable, into the enemy's country, ... He frankly 



"'Burgess, The Civil War and the Const., Vol. I. 
'ssprothingham. Life of Theo. Parker, 461. 
"'Life of Theo. Parker, 453. 



326 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

said that whatever was entrusted to him must be entrusted uncon- 
ditionally/"" 

The futile attempt of more recent years to warp history with the 
impression that the Harper's Ferry affair had no widespread, pow- 
erful, and dangerous backing, is apparent upon slight analysis. 
Some Northern men who had avowed their purpose to invade the 
South with the overwhelming numbers and the superior wealth of 
the North, have sought to divert the ear and eye of the world and 
centre them upon John Brown as a criminal fool who had little 
backing. Eli Thayer, for instance, has painted Brown in most 
Stygian colors — but why ? What part had Thayer, twice a member 
of the Massachusetts legislature and at the very time of Brown's 
raid a member of Congress, — Eli Thayer, the fluent of tongue, the 
prime mover of the emigrant-incubator — what connection had he 
with Harper's Ferry? John Brown, according to Mr, Thayer's 
own statements, went to him in Worcester, Massachusetts, "to 
solicit a contribution of arms for the defence of some Kansas set- 
tlements which he said he knew were soon to be attacked by parties 
already organized in Missouri for that purpose. Not doubting his 
word," says Thayer, "I gave him all the armte I had, in value 
about five hundred and fifty dollars." "NOT DOUBTING HIS 
WOED." This is a thin attempt to evade responsibility. How 
could Thayer believe the story? Notice the true situation: 
(1) Brown was not then and had never been recognized by Thayer 
as reliable. Before this request for armfe, Amos A. Lawrence had 
asked Robinson, Mr. Thayer's agent, to employ Brown in the work 
ol the Einigrant Aid Company. "But very soon Governor Robin- 
son wrote that he would not employ him, as he was unreliable, and 
'would as soon shoot a United States officer as a border ruffian,' " 
so testifies Mr. Thayer himself."" (2) Thayer himself denounces 
Brown for his Kansas murders in vigorous language: "If any 
butcher in New York city should hack and slash his own hogs and 
steers as John Brown hacked and slashed to death these men and 
boys in Kansas, he would be arrested and imprisoned without 
delay. After this Brown slew an unarmed, inoffensive farmer in 
Missouri.'"*" Thayer, according to his own testimony, knew that 



"«Ib., 454. 

"'Kansas Cinsade, 192. 

^"Kansas Crusade, 196. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 327 

Brown had said, "I have not come to make Kansas free, but to get 
a shot at the South." Thayer confesses : "He wished to begin a 
civil war."'" Thayer knew Brown's position with reference to the 
South. For charity's sake the South may never say that Thayer 
furnished that five hundred and fifty dollars worth of gims in 
order, Nero-like, to laugh while Brown took that deadly shot; but 
the day is here when impartial history will say that the criminal 
negligence of the North was becoming an unbearable menace when 
munitions of war would be given to one known to be "unreliable, 
and who would as soon shoot a United States officer as a border 
ruffian"; entrusted to a man who had slain unarmed, inofPensive 
men, — ^and that to a man who had no connection with the cause 
which Thayer represented. No, the South, at least, will never 
believe that Mr. Thayer was misled. This will be the Southern 
verdict for various other reasons, some of which are: (1) At the 
time that Brown sought and obtained these guns, the United States 
soldiers had, by order of the President, long since undertaken the 
pacification of Kansas; (3) these soldier's were upon the ground, 
amply strong, and indisputably willing to protect all parties mak- 
ing proper application to their officers; (3) they could have been 
reached long before Brown and his guns could have gone from 
Massachusetts to Kanlsas; (4) for over three years the Northern 
settlers in Kansas had been well armed, had drilled companies and 
all the guns they could use; (5) all these facts were known to 
Thayer better than to any other man in the world. With all his 
sulphurous anathemas against Brown, Senator Thayer has failed 
to divert attention from the crimson hue of his own reckless acts. 
I must agree with one statement, at least, made by Thayer's North- 
ern reviewers: "Mr. Thayer is not above garbling, by suppression 
and otherwi'se."^" 

Commenting on the assistance rendered Brown in preparing for 
his Harper's Ferry attack, by George Luther Stearns, a wealthy 
Boston merchant, Hinton says, "Without I^Ir. Steam's friendship 
and cooperation, the blow at Harper's Ferry would probably never 
have been delivered." While this expression is doubtless an effort 
to throw discredit on those who have since defamed old Brown to 



'"lb., 195. 

7«The Nation, Nov. 7, 1889, p. 373. 



328 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

hide their own sins, yet it shows tliat Northern wealth was being 
devoted to aid aggressive war npon the South. Frothingham says 
Steamfe was Brown's "largest supplier of material aid.''"" The 
South was undoubtedly justified in the belief that the North was 
ready to hear any man, no matter what his record or how design- 
ing his future, so that he was an enemy to the slave-holding section. 
Long after Brown's Pottowatomie butchery, we find one branch of 
the ]\Iassachusetts legislature listening to him addres's them ; next we 
see him in Boston "arranging for the Stearns' riflefe that were cap- 
tured by Virginia in 1859";'" next he speaks to crowded houses in 
the leading cities of Connecticut ; then we find liim preparing to arm 
the negroes. "At Collinsville [Connecticut] he made with Charles 
Blair a contract for the manufacture of 1,000 pikeis, 900 of which 
were captured by Virginia." Upon the pike contract he paid cash 
$550.'" Here is a point which some overlook: negroes were not 
trained to use tlie gun, — a pike was the negroes' weapon. No 
stronger evidence was needed to convince Northern men of Brown's 
intention. Sharp's rifles. United States Spring-field muskets, and 
Hall's carbines were sent by Northern people to Kansas : in less 
than one year, 1855-'56, no less than five thousand one hundred of 
thefee and tw^o thousand five hundred revolvers, and four twelve- 
pound guns, — besides the thousands that preceded, and the great 
numbers that came after; but pikes were made with which to open 
the hearts of the Southern people who yet remained on their native 
lands ! The truth is, that the leaders of the Northern "movement" 
were ignorant of Brown's plans only to the extent that he divulged 
the time and place to a chosen few; in thite he certainly showed 
some generalship. Of this latter number was Henry Howe, LL. 
D., the well-known historian, and for so-me time member of the 
United States Senate. Howe says that he had a conversation with 
Brown concerning the undertaking at Harper's Ferry the very 
night Brown started for that place.'*° Yet not once did he warn 
Virginia, the Federal Government, or any private individuals of 
the threatened evil, — by doing which he might have saved himself 
the guilt of an accessory before the fact. Frothingham, writing 

'"Life of Theo. Parker, 459. 

'"Hinton, John Brown and His Men. 143-4. 

"'Tliayer, Tlie Kans. Crusade, 199. 

""Howe, Hist. Ohio, Cent. Ed.. Vol. III., 331. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 329 

of the Eev. Theo. Parker's part in the arch conspiracy against prop- 
erty', happiness, life, and female security, says that February 33, 
1858, in preparing for Harper's Ferry, in the State oi New York, 
"in a retired spot, beneath a perfectly loyal roof, to a few tried 
and trusty people .the Virginia scheme was unfolded in all its 
parts, the locality illustrated, the provisions and contingencies 
explained, the movements detailed, the probable or possible event- 
ualities confronted. The whole evening, and all the next day, the 
discussion went on between the conspirator on the one side, and 
his astonished auditors on the other; the old hero answering ques- 
tions, meeting objections, quieting doubts, disarming fears. . . .'"" 
F. B. Sambom, who wrote Brown's life at the request of tlie 
family, Edwin Morton, a classmate of Sanborn at Harvard Uni- 
versity,'" and other prominent men were present at this meeting 
and were the approving auditors to the plots of this red-handed 
Kansas murderer. Charity alone forbids me to exclaim : 

'•Devil with devil damned 
Firm concord holds /' 

and 

" Lured with the smell of infant blood, 

great deeds 
Had been achieved whereof all hell had wrung;" 

for mighty Northern leaders 

"cried out Death! 
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed 
From all her caves, and back resounded Death!" 

But since 

"neither do the spirits damned 
Lose all their virtue," 

so it was determined to move cautiously and surely. But should 
I apply this figure, would my words be merely those of groundless 
denunciation? Dr. Burgess, Dean of the Faculty of the Univer- 
sity of Columbia (New York), says, "Brown certainly intended 
the wholesale murder of the whites by the blacks in case that 
should be found necessary to effect his purpose.'"" Brown was 



'^'Octavus Brooks Frothingham, Life of Theo. Parker (Boston, 1874), 45£ 
'•"Chadwick's Life Theo. Parker. 337. 
"»The Civil War and the Const., VoL L, 42. 



330 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

bent on worse than rebellion, worse than the most inexcusable seces- 
sion, — the success of his mission meant murder and infinitely more 
damnable consequences. Could I find language too strong with 
which to describe the schemes of those who' plot to perpetrate or 
enable others to commit the liighest crimes known to civilization? 
Sanborn reported to T. W. Higginson and Eev. Theo. Parker what 
Brown had divulged. Parker had Brown come secretly to Boston 
for an interview. At thi's interview the Virginia scheme was dis- 
cussed with Parker, Higginson, Stearns, and Howe — all men of 
means", men of prominence, men of education; all men who would 
never have dreamed of endeaivoring to repeat on Southern soil the 
nauseating horrors of the negro insurrection of Hayti, had not 
the Northern anti-slavery fanatics — all classes, the underground 
railroad, the Kansas rebellion, the literature, full of falsehoods or 
over-stated conditions, issued by various anti-slavery organiza- 
tions — had not the combined influence of all these — prepared the 
way and rendered in sympathy with such movements a large public 
sentiment of misguided and unduly excited N'orthern people. 

James Eedpath^ a man of education and fair ability, had for 
years been one of Brown's confidents and staunch supporters. 
That he was guilty, the fact that he fled from the committee sent 
by the United States Senate to inquire into the Harper's Ferry 
affair, attestfe most conclusively. He did not have the courage to 
face an investigating committee; but, secure from punishment for 
a crime of which he was as guilty as Broiwoi, in the fall of 1859 he 
sat himself down and wrote for publication his "Public Life of 
Captain John Brown." It was one of the strong witnesses which 
impelled the South to believe tliat she was at any time liable to a 
repetition of slave insurrections led by intelligent whites of the 
North. It is also an important witness to prove the cliaracter and 
influence of the men who were behind this and similar moves. 
The book was published in Boston by Thayer and Eldridge. It 
was given to the public in the early part of 1860, In their Card 
the publishers "congratulate themselves and the public" on secur- 
ing Eedpath as the author of the publication, because they say he 
was a man "whose previous life had been so identified in feeling 
and character with the career of the sainted hero." Blessed be 
skeol! was sweeter music to Southern ears. In his preface the 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 331 

aiitlior says tba/t when he heard of John Brown's arrest, "I en- 
dorsed John Brown," and went into print to defend him and his 
"scheme of emancipation." He expresses his pleasure that the 
publishers of his book "believed in John Brown." On page eight 
of the Preface he says, "I think John Brown did right in invad- 
ing Virginia and attempting to liberate her slaves." He endorses 
slave insurrection because he says it is the only weapon the South- 
ern people fear. He dates chapter one "December 2, 1859," and 
on page tliirteen says, "To-day John Brown was banged by a semi- 
barbarous Cormnonwealth, as a traitor, murderer, and robber, and 
fifteen despotic States are rejoicing at his death; while, in the free 
North, every noble heart is sighing at his fate, or admiring his 
devotion . . ., or cursing the executioners of their warrior-saint." 
The author tells his readers that yet another insurrection is to fol- 
low the one Brown imperfectly began. But I must pass this 
witness; let those who doubt read his book; and then question he 
who can that the South was sorely pressed. 

John Henri Kagi, of the New York Post; Eichard J. Hinton, 
Kansals correspondent of the Boston Traveler and the Chicago Tri- 
bune, and eight other intelligent white men, had assisted Brown 
and helped to make the preparations. They went with him from 
the drill-field at Springdale to Harper's Ferry. Ka,gi and Hinton 
were fully aware of Brown's plans months before the effort to carry 
them into execution. Owen Brown "who was vowed to the work in 
his early youth," was a warm advocate of his father's designs and 
intended onslaught on white slave-owners. Hinton points out 
that in Philadelphia, on March 10th previous to Harper's Ferry, 
Brown must have communicated details of his plan to Fred Dduglas, 
Henry Highland Garnet, of New York, and Stephen Smith and 
William Still, of Philadelphia; and that as a result of this con- 
ference, Brown's son was sent to Hagerstown, Martinsburg, and 
Harper's Ferry, to make certain inquiries, and that "the object of 
these was to find out the underground railroad routes and sta- 
tions.'"'" This information is important because it shows that the 
underground system had much to do in making possible slave 
insurrections by white Northerners. 

III. That Brown was only one among many willing, aggressive 

"ojohn Brown and His Men, 170. 



333 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

white NortJierners who sought an opportunity to lead the slave in 
insurrection; and that tlie teachings of others besides Brown that 
slave insurrection was to be devoutly desired^ — whose position 
likewise received the endorsement of prominent Northern citizens 
and officials, — did much to confirm the South in her belief of im- 
pending calamity, and also go to establish my premises. 

Richard J. Hinton, some time one of tlie editors of the Repuhlic, 
published in Washington city after the war, amd who, from about 
188-i, M^as connected with, the American Society of Irrigation En- 
gineer's, of New York, went to Kansas in the early days of her 
insurrection as tlie representative and correspondent of the Boston 
Traveler and Chicago Tribune. In 1894 he published his book, 
John Brown and His Men. In it he admits that he went to Kan- 
sas to excite, foster, or lead, if need be, slave insurrection. This 
is not the only evidence that the Kansas rebellion was meant to be 
war — war not alone for the conquest of Kansas, but war upon the 
Soutli. July 12, 1858, Eev. Theo. Parker wrote: "In 1856 we 
were quite close to a civil war. Had the governor of Kansas done 
as we bid . . . the war would have begam then,""' "As we bid !" 
The "we" must have been the ISTorthern leaders of the emigrant 
aid and other similar organizations, to all of which Parker was a 
constant conti'ibutor. However unreliable a witneste may be, state- 
ments criminating him'self are always evidence of the highest 
character to prove his guilt. James Eedpath, a native Oif Massa- 
chusetts, went West and became identified with an organ called 
the Missouri Democrat. In a published work (New York, 1858) 
he avowed that he had gone to Kansas "lioping to foment slave in- 
surrection." It is certain that Brown's move on Harper's Ferry 
was merely a part of a plan which, in its entirety, failed to^ mate- 
rialize. The cause of the failure was that a man, — ^an English 
fencing master, — who had been employed by Brown to give instruc- 
tions in drill, gave out some general information which caused 
Brown to move before the appointed day. As is shovni by Froth- 
ingham, no definite information was given, but it precipitated 
action. It had been planned that Dr. A. M. Robs, of Toronto, 
Canada., who went to Richmond, Virginia, "according to a pre- 
vious understanding with Brown," should carry out anoth ""-^^il 

"'Frothlngham's Life of Parker. 47.5. 



NORTHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 333 

of the bloodv tragedy, though just what it was we shall probably 
never know. It is practically admitted in Eoss's letter of Jan. ^1, 
1893'" Ross and HintK>n are both corroborated by Redpath^ 
whose book, as I have said, was published in 1860. He emphati- 
cally states that the object of Brown and his co-conspirators m 
coing to Canada previous to Harper's Ferry wa« to elicit the sup- 
W of the slaves who had fled to tliat country. While in Canada, 
Brown and his other intelligent white coadjutor's had prepared a 
form of government which they meant to enforce a^ soon as they 
secured a hold in the South."^ An examination of this plan ot 
o-overnment and the evidence connected with it, will convince one 
that Brown meant to take the entire South,-and not to run off 
small bands of slaves as is sometimes claimed. The Canadian 
negroes were organized, together with whatever white help could 
be obtained, and it was arranged that the Canadian and other con- 
tingents were to march under orders from Brown, the head of the 
new government, of which Kagi was "secretary of war," to Har- 
per's Ferry about October 24tli. For some time Brown had had 
his guns and munitions of war secreted in a farm house near Har- 
per's Ferry and on the Maryland side. The information which 
had gone abroad, together with suspicions which had been aroused 
by reason of the several men who had been seen about the rented 
premises, induced B^o^^m to fear detection and so to strike earlier 
than the dav set. Concerning this unexpected decision, Eedpath 
says "But the decision, however necessary, was unfortunate; tor 
the men from Canada, Kansas, New England, and the neighboring 
free States, who had been told to prepare for the event on the 34th 
of October, and who were ready to do their duty at Harper's Ferry 
at that time, were unable to join their captain at this earlier period. 
Many who started to join the Liberators, halted halfway; for the 
blow had already been struck, and their captain made a captive. 
Had there been no precipitation, the mountains of Virginia 
to-dav [fall of 1859] would have been peopled with free blacks 
properlv officered and ready for field action.""^ It had been 
arrano-ed that the slaves should be drilled to use pikes, scythes, cut- 



"=Vide HiDton's John Brown, 174, 269. 

-sThis plan in full is set out in Sen. Docs.. Vol. II., 1 sess., 36 Cong., 

-"Redpath, John Brown's Public Life, 243-4. 



334 XOKTHERX KEBELLION AND SOUTHERX SECESSIOX. 

lasses, and bludgeons of all kinds until their liberation or the 
extermination of their masters^, motet likely botli, should be accom- 
plished. Even after the blow had heen struck, Brown hoped for the 
promised aid; but the prompt action of the then Col. E. E. Lee 
prevented "Canada, Kansas, New England, and the free States" 
from marching to join in the carnage. 

I pause here to remark that some have said that the Kepublican 
party, as it was before the war, was responsible for Harper's Ferry. 
With this view I do not agree. I believe that the Eepublican 
party that elected Lincoln, and John Brown's attempted slave in- 
surrection, were twin brothers, — bom of a distorted moral judg- 
ment, largely the result of misinformation; tlie union of various 
rivulets guided into a stream whotee course could be stopped only 
by a merciful God after the wicked had triumphed for a season. 

But the men more closely associated with Brown were by no 
means all of their class, nor all who cherished similar ambitions. 
There were, toQ, many sources from which emanated disturbing 
and misleading influences which added untold weight and did 
much to produce the graver conditions. All through the bitter 
years do\ATa to Bro^wn's raid, the North had a decided advantage in 
having the most widely circulated papers, and most extensive pub- 
lishing houses. In this way she led public opinion in her own 
borders, and largely moulded sentiment abroad. Many of her 
most influential books and papers were the most untruthful, or 
most base in their plans and recommendations for the treatment 
of the Southern people. A few well-known instances will be rep- 
resentative of their classes. 

A writer, who, at the time he wrote these words, was professor 
of Jurisprudence in the university of which he is now president, 
an institution of which not New Jei^ey alone is proud, says, 
"Books like Mrs. Stowe's 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' which stirred up 
the pity and deep indignation of Northern readers, certainly de- 
picted possible cases of inhuman conduct toward the slaves. Such 
cases there have been ; they may even have been frequent ; but they 
were in every sense exceptional, showing what the system could 
produce, rather than what it did produce as its characteristic spirit 
and method. For public opinion in the South, while it recognized 
the necessity for maintaining the discipline of subordination 



XORTHERX llEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 335 

dmong tlie hofets of slaves, was as intolerant of the graver forms of 
cruelt}^ as was the opinion of the best people in the IS'orth,""' At 
another place the same author says, "In the summer of 1852 ap- 
peared a new engine of anti-slavery sentiment, Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe's powerfully written novel, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' with' its 
moving and imaginative protraj'al of the pathos, the humor, tlie 
tragedy, the terror of the slave system. While it unquestionably 
showed what might come out of the system, it was built upon 
wholly exceptionable incidents. It was a product of the sympa- 
thelic imagination, wliich the historian muSt reject as quite mis- 
leading, but it nevertheless stirred to their profoundest depths 
thousands of minds in the North which the politician might never 
have reached with his protests against the extension of slavery. 
It was a subtle instrument of power, and played no small part in 
creating the anti-slavery party, which was presently to show its 
strength upon so great a scale in national politics.""^ 

Yet it was upon such information, similar in its want of veracity 
to such statements as those given out by a prominent Northern 
agitator Sept. 11, 1856, when, in all sincerity, he declared that 
with the Missourians or the Southern immigrants in Kan'sas 
"scalping is as common as with other savages" ; or not less ground- 
less and misleading than when the same man informed his friends 
that Governor Shannon had "furnished the Southern marauders" 
arms and whiskey and set them "to scalp the peaceful citizens of 
Kansas" — that the mad clamor against the South fed. Nothing 
less than a dangerou'sly mad mania was possible under such stimu- 
lants. 

Thomas H. Gladstone, the English journalist, played no unim- 
portant part in disseminating error concerning the South. His 
most damaging work was at a time most critical in our history. 
He was the correspondent of the London, England, Times. He 
came to New York in the winter of 1855-'56 ; from there, passing 
through some of tlie Southern States, he went to Kansas. From 
Kansas he wrote contributions which professed to give the unbiased 
truth concerning the struggle between the North and the South as 
it was being carried on in the new Territorv. His writings were 



^Woodrow Wilson, Division and Reunion, 126- 
"«Ib., 181. 



336 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

put in book fomi; one edition, ''Kansas; or. Squatter Life and 
Border Warfare in the Far West/' was published by a London 
house in 1857. Another, about the same time in the same year, 
was published by a New York ho'use, and purported to be "edited" 
by L. M. Olmfetead. Through the London Times and these two 
publications of his book, he reached, to say the least of it, the 
j^orthern people in America and the English-speaking people in 
Europe. His means of influence were great. He helped to poison 
the Northern mind; he added breath to the mad mania sweeping 
down upon the South. A^Hien I realize the error, the inaccurate 
information, upon which Northern anti-slavery indignation grew, 
I am led rather to pity the masses than condemn. Saddefet of all, 
is the blind faith and unyielding tenacity with which some yet 
cling to the fast decaying skeleton of untruth in the anti-Southern 
pre-bellum declarations. Slowly history moves to the vindication 
of the South's position from first to last. 

Professor Albert Buslinell Hart, of Harvard University, has 
compiled what purports to give various phases of our country's 
history "as told by contemporaries." That within itself is harm- 
less; "error is harmless while reason is left free to combat it," said 
Sumner in the House of Representatives, March the 12th, 1856. 
But when the youth of our land are left under the impression that 
error is truth — when error lies hidden beneath high scholastic 
sanction — reason is helpless and error robs truth of rightful do- 
minion. Professor Harfs work, "Welding of the Nation," in 
American contemporary history series, contains several excerpts 
from the New York edition (1857) of Mr. Gladstone's book. 
Hart's book, among other things, purports to give the readers 
some impartial contemporary evidence of the great struggle be- 
tw^een the North and the Soutli as wrought out in Kansas. 
Speaking of the field of his evidence, in the Preface, Professor 
Hart says, "I have tried ... to call upon the best informed and 
best disposed witnesses." In the prefatory biographical note he 
says,. "Gladstone, a kinsman of William E. Gladstone, was an Eng- 
lishman who came to the United States as an ordinary traveler and 
after a tour through the South arrived in Kansas at a critical 
period. His experience was to a large degree from the pro-slavery 
side; and his account, first published in the London Times, is per- 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 337 

haps the most impartial contiemporar}- narrative that we have.'"" 
"After a tour through the South/' says Professor Hart. Yes, but 
that was after a "tour" through the Xorth, and after Gladstone 
had formed and expressed an opinion as to the guilt of slave- 
holders, and in favor of the right of the Northern movement in 
Kajisas. He was in New York "during the latter part of the 
winter 18oo-'56.""* On his way South he spent some time in 
Washington city. While there and he fore his investigation, he 
wrote, "I . . . was not long in discovering that, while the Presi- 
dent and the advocates of the Southern views maintained the 
authority of the illegally constituted Territorial Legislature of 
Kansas, the judiciary and other officers appointed by it, th.e oppo- 
site party, with a large portion of the people of Kansas them- 
selves," supported another organization.'"' He thus unqualifiedly 
brands the Southern-elected legislature ais "illegally constituted," 
and prejudices his readers by charging the South and the Presi- 
dent with Supporting an illegal body. 

Perhaps nothing Gladstone said placed the South in a more 
unjust light, especially in the eyes of Elurope, than the way in 
which he announces the appointment by the House of Representa- 
tives of the Kansas investigating committee. Having mentioned 
the motion to appoint such a committee, he says, "No member 
from any one of the Southern States voted in favor of tlie investi- 
gation, but happily a majority was given by tlie Northern 
States."'^" ^Miile this statement upon its face is true, yet to say 
no more than he does, especially when taken in connection with 
other assertions in his writings, was a gross injustice to the South- 
ern position; Mr. Gladstone "smothered the issue," to appropriate 
the words of a Northern Congressman used in another connection. 
Gladstone was speaking not alone for Northern ears, but thro'Ugh the 
paper which he represented, the London Times, he spoke to at least 
all English-Europe. As a "most impartial contemporar}'," as "the 
best informed" witness, presuming to speak if he neglected or sup- 
pressed important truth, he thus branded himself as a rtiost pre- 
judiced contemporary and showed that he was Idv no means the 



"^Am. Hist. Told by Conf ies, Vol. IV., p. 114. 
"'London (1857) Edition, p. 1. 
"i'lb., 4. 
'soib., 5. 

22 



338 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

best dispoteed witness, and left upon his story evidence of gross 
injustice — an injustice wliich helped to prejudice the European 
M^orld so deeply that the scar j^et remains.'"' He was in Washing- 
ton at the time, and from the galleries of the Capitol was hearing, 
or should have been, the arguments of both sidefe. But little — 
certainly no adequate — presentation of the Southern position on 
the Kansas question does he give. Unquestionably the impression 
left by his language is that the Southern Congressmen were either 
afraid of a Congressional investigation or too unfair to agree to 
one. The tome history of the appointment of the Kansas investi- 
gating committee, whose majority report Mr. Ehodes calls the 
Howard Report, appointed under a resolution which passed the 
House of Representatives March 19, 1856, not only helps us to 
understand Gladstone's pro-N'orthern prejudice, but is historv^ of 
no little value and significance. 

The motion authorizing the committee grew out of the contest 
by ex-Governor Eeeder for the seat of General Whitfield in the 
House of Representatives to which Whitfield claimed he had been 
re-elected October 1, 1855. This contest was before the Committee 
of Elections, to whom it properly belonged. The committee had 
asked the House for enlarged powers, whereupon it was moved, 
"That the Committee of Elections, in the contested election case 
from Kansas, be and are hereby empowered to send for persons 
and papers, and to examine witnesses upon oath or affirmation." 
Whereupon, William W. Boyce, a representative from South Caro- 
lina, moved that this resolution be re-committed to the Com- 
mittee of Election, with the following instiiictions, viz. : 

"Resolved, That the Committee of Elections, in examining and 
judging of the ^elections, returns, and qualifications,' of persons 
claiming to have been elected represeoitatives of States, or dele- 
gates of Territories which have been duly organized by Congress, 
shall exclude fromj their consideration the claims of all persons 
who, after being afforded ample time to do so, fail to show the elec- 
tion imder which they 'claim to have been elected a representative 
or delegate was held in pursuance of the laws of the State or Ter- 
ritory sought to be represented by such claimant or claimants, or 



'"Instance: Dr. von Hoist (Germany), Hist. U. S., Vol. V., 233. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 339 

was elected in pursuance of a la,w of the United States for the gov- 
ei'nment of such election. 

"Eesolved, further^ That, in the opinion of the House no repre- 
sentative of a State of the Union, and no delegate of a Territory 
organized by Congi-ess, can rightfully be admitted to a seat in this 
House, except in pursuance of la,w. 

"Eesolved, further. That the validity of the laws of Congress, 
of States, and of Territories, can be rightfully passed upon by the 
courts duly established by the constitutions and laws, and by no 
other power; that, until repealed or modified, or declared null and 
void by the judiciary, the executive and legislative powers of the 
government must conform their actions to the laws of the land, 
and may not disregard them.'' 

"Eesolved, further, That the Coimnittee of Election's be hereby 
instructed to pursue their investigations in accordance with the 
foregoing principles.""" 

On the 4th of March Mr. Boyce withdrew his motion to recom- 
mit with the above instructions, and Hedl^y S. Bennett, of Mis- 
sissippi, moved to amend the said reisolution by striking out all 
after the word "Eesolved," and offered a broad resolution appoint- 
ing JaiS. H. Bradley and Sidney S. Baxter a committee to examine 
this contested election, and which motion clothed them with full 
power "to elicit clear and full proof upon all points which the par- 
ties may respectively submit to them as facts they, or either of 
them, desire to establish or contrO'vert." This resolution proposed 
that they take depositions and what else "would tend to a full and 
perfect elicitation of the truth touching all such controverted mat- 
ter's."'"^ Then he moved to instruct the committee "to exclude," as 
did Boyce, "from their consideration the claims of all persons who 
fail to show that the election under which they claim to have been 
elected" was "held in pursuance of the la-w-s of the State or Terri- 
tory sought to be represented."'" 

This involved a question that the Eepublican-abolition members 
of the House refused to face. Eeeder claimed to have been elected 
at a gathering of the free-State people in which they alone par- 



's^ journal H. R., March 6, 1856, p. 646. 
'"^House Journal, March 14, p. 678. 
'"lb., 678. 



340 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

ticipated October 9, whereas the regnlar authorized election had 
been held on the 1st. The Eepublican majority of the investigating 
committee, which as we well know was finally appointed, do not 
claim for Eeeder a single vote at the regular election; they do not 
dispute that Whitfield received a majority of the legal votes. They 
frankly admit that on the regular day of the election, October 1st, 
"the free-State men took no part."'"' It must be remembered that 
at the time Eeeder claimed to have been elected, the Topeka gov- 
ernment did not pretend to have any organization for civil 
purposes, and it wafe not contended that he was elected under tlie 
laws of any organized power. This being ti-ue, the South took the 
correct position, that, as contestant aind in an election contest for 
a seat, he could not be heard to dispute the laws under which the 
sitting delegate was elected. Hon. W. H. Engliteh, representative 
from Indiana, addressing the House March 18th, pending this 
question, stated the situation in language which cannot be im- 
proved. Said he, "At the time of the organization of the present 
Congress, Mr. Whitfield appeared, produced his credential's (which 
were in due form), received the oaith of office, and took his seat as 
a delegate upon this floor. He wSiS, prima facie at least, as much 
entitled to a seat as any gentleman here. Upon the face of the 
papers he was the duly elected delegaite — ^was certified to be such 
by the Governor — was chosen at an election held under authority 
of a law passed by the Kansas Legislature, the members of which 
were elected in pursuance of the act of Congress organizing the 
Territory. No one can dispute, therefore, that, as the case now 
stands, he shoivs a regular chain of title and a perfect right to his 
seat; and that it devolves upon those who contest this right, to 
disprove his title, by competent proof, in the manner prescribed by 
law, and in accordance with the usages of this body. A. H. Eeeder 
is the gentleman who contests the seat, and upon whose memorial 
the Committee of Elections have asked for unlimited power to 
send for persons and papers, and this is the immediate question 
before the House. It is proper to remark that at the election held 
pursuant to the act of the Kansas Legislature, ]\Ir. Whitfield 
received two thousand nine hundred votes, and Mr. Eeeder but 
thirty-six [though it afterward developed that none Avere claimed 

'"^Maj. Report, Sp. Com., 34 Cong., 1 sess., Xo. 200, pp. 44-5. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 341 

for him] — the whole number of votes being less than three thou- 
sand. The latter does not claim to have been elected at that time, 
nor does he pretend that all the votes cast for j\Ir. Whitfield were 
illegal. He alleges that some hundreds of them were illegal, but 
does not contend, nor does any of his friends, that any other person 
received more legal votes at that election than ]\Ir. Whitfield. If 
Mr. Whitfield had received but one hundred legal votes, and that 
was the highest number of legal votes any individual received, he 
would still be clearly entitled to the seat. Mr. Eeeder claims to 
have been elected at another time; and, although he says that he 
received a miajority of the legal votes [in this different and separate 
election], he does not say, and cannot say, it was at an election 
authorized by law. The truth is, it was at an irregular and unau- 
thorized gathering of the people without any legal sanction what- 
ever." So it was that the Southern members land thpir friends 
proposed to in'struct the Committee of Elections, or whomsoever 
should be appointed to adjudge the contest, as the House had a 
right to do, as ]\Ir. English put case, "that the claimant must 
rely upon the strength of his own case, and not upon the weahness 
of his adversary . . . lie must come into court with clean hands, 
and cannot be allowed to tal-e advantage of his own tvrong/"'' 
That is, the Southern members and their Democratic friends stood 
upon the plain, jufet, and applicable principles of law and equity 
and parliamentary procedure, that until Eeeder showed that what- 
ever votes he had received were cast at a legal and authorized 
election, he could not question, as contestant, the election of the 
sitting delegate.'" The South shrank no proper investigation. 
On the contrary, her resolution's courted the fullest; nor did she 
stickle as to who should constitute the committee to decide the con- 
test. One of her resolutions proposed Bradley and Baxter, 
distinguished Washington lawyers, who seem to have been per- 
sonally unobjectionable to no portion of the House. Yet, she 
declared that any fair and unbiased committee would be acceptable. 
Fully aware that Eeeder had no valid claim, the Northern members 
sought to avoid this instruction to the investigating committee or 



""App. Cong. Globe. 34 Cong., 1 sess., 289. 

7«'See a full discussion, App. Cong. Globe. 34 Cong., 1 sess., 118-122, 122-127, 
277-280. 



343 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

that of Electionfe, as the case might be; and, in the security of 
their numbers, preferred to hold matters where they could dispose 
of them as policy dictated. Hence, on March 17th, Mr. Dunn, of 
Indiana, had moved to amend the pending motion to amend, and 
had offered a resolution to appoint a committee "to inquire into 
and collect evidence in regard to the troubles in Kansas generally," 
etc., with the Keeder contest as its basis."* On the 19th of March 
the question came up on agreeing to tliis amendment to the amend- 
ment offered by Mr. Dunn, which clothed the committee with all 
embracing powers of investigation instead of directing them to 
determine the contested seat of General Whitfield, the question 
before the House. By a vote of 104 to 91 the House agreed to 
amend, and the resolution as amended passed by a vote of 103 to 
93, with the Southern members and Democrats generally in the 
negative.'"" Few acts have been less justified in point of law, or 
less without valid legislative precedent, yet few things have re- 
sulted more in the preservation of valuable evidence vindicating 
Southern honesty and self-defence. But nothing of all this does 
Mr. Gladstone give his Northern and English readers. Let us go 
further into our analysis of his alleged impartiality and historical 
credibility. 

He gives an untruthful picture of meetings which he says he 
visited while in the Southern States, and at which he says men of 
influence "delivered addresses of almost incredible violence on the 
necessity of ^forcing slavery into Kansas,' and which terminated 
by an earnest appeal for men and money. The result of this public 
agitation was, that large companies were formed of yonng men 
who were enthusiastic for slavery, and subscriptions of large 
amounts were made to send these, who were already at blood-heat 
with excitement, armed into the Territory, flushed with means 
of support during the continuance of their campaign.""" He pro- 
fesses this information upon personal knowledge, hence it can be 
nothing less than a deliberate misrepresentation. Not only no 
"large companies armed" were sent or went from the South tO' 
Kansas, but no large companies at that time — prior to May, '56, — 



'«»House Journal, 685-6. 
■""lb., 693, 700. 
■'"London Ed., 6. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 343 

armed or unarmed went to Kansas from the South "flushed with 
means of support during the continuance of their campaign." 
While no one accuses even the much berated "border ruffians of 
Missouri" witli being "flushed with means of support," yet it 
was not of Missourians he spoke; he tells this story of the people 
of "South Carolina and other Southern States."'" If he spoke of 
the Buford movement, or that of Titus or any other branch 
thereof, he misrepresented it, because they were neither "flushed 
with the means of support during the continuance of the cam- 
paign," nor were they armed, as Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, 
admitted in a bitter speech of volcanic but baseless denunciations 
against Mi'ssourians, in which he said that "their lawless chiefs 
deserve to die felons' deaths and to leave felons' names." He 
alleged that Governor Shannon armed these South Carolina, 
Georgia, and other Southerners AFTEE they reached the Terri- 
tory,'" but as I have shown, the recorded testimony of non-Southern 
United States Army officers tells quite another story. Gladstone 
was in the North before visiting the South, yet he scarcely men- 
tions the early, widespread, and flushed, Northern emigrant 
organizations, and what little he does say of them is as utterly 
misleading as the English at his command would express. Hear 
him: "To meet these efforts on the part of organizations in Mis- 
souri, Emigrant Aid societies were formed in Boston and elsewhere 
in the Eastern States to promote the movement on the side of the 
North.""' "To meet" — yes, he learned his lesson well from Messrs. 
Howard and Sherman of the investigating committee, with whom 
he associated in Kansas part of the time they were acting under 
their Congressional orders, — he vouches the untruth that the ag- 
gressive emigrant movement began in Missouri, and that "flushed 
with means of support" armed bodies swept up from the South. 
He failed to tell of the "Beecher Bibles" contributed by "rich New 
Englanders"; he forgets about the Northern cannon and the thou- 
sands of Sharp's rifles that had gone from men of influence in the 
North to the free-State ranks, some of them many months before 
he reached Kansas. He tells nothing of the cause of whatever he 



'"lb., 5. 

"=App. Cong. Globe, 34 Cong., 1 sess., 855. 

'"London Ed., ffO. 



344 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

may have heard and seen in the South; the reader is left to feel 
that this "perhaps the most impartial contemporary" is giving 
US a true version of an aggressive Southern movement — and a 
movement to sustain what the writer took care to tell the reader 
was tlie "illegally constituted Territorial Legislature of Kansas."'" 

Mr. Gladstone got to Missouri in May, 1856, "five hundred 
miles from the scene of the conflict."'" May 22d he arrived on 
the "spot" and then proceeds to chronicle the story with which 
Professor Hart begins his excerpts in "Welding of the Nation." 
This may be found on page 21 of the London edition. Gladstone 
says he writes fro.m "information gathered on the spot" (page 11), 
and "for the most part from pro-slavery men." Let's see. 

He says the attack upon and destrxiction of Lawrence May 21, 
1856, and the imprisonment of free-State leaders, evoked a spirit 
of resistance. He thus ignored the truth that armed resistance 
had been universal, or well-nigh so, with free-State people 
for nearly a year before May 21st. He says, "On tliat event- 
ful day, the town of Lawrence, without offence or crime, was 
attacked by armed forces." "Without offence or crime" — does 
any one believe that such a statement came from a pro-slavery 
source ? Can any impartial reader look at the facts concerning 
the free-State rebellious movements with Lawrence as head- 
quarters, and believe that she was "without offence or crime?" 
Now, look at the excerpt given by Profefesor Hart for which he 
vouches it is "perhaps most impartial." Mr. Gladstone goes back 
a little before depicting the scenes of May 21st. Speaking of the 
"Wakarusa war in the winter of 1855," he says, "Before the ter- 
mination of this first siege, the necessity of some means of defence 
Ix-ing manifest," the inhabitants proceeded to fortify. The truth is, 
they fortified long before this first affair which, as I have shown, 
grew out of the Branson rescue. This information concerning the 
first "fortifying" of Lawrence was not only not pro-slavery infor- 
mation, but was misleading and inaccurate, and conveyed a most 
erroneons idea afe to the beginning of hostilities. Again, of this 
same first "attack" or first "Wakarusa war," he says, "The inhabi- 
tants were also placed under arms," etc. When the truth is that 



"*Tb., 4. 
"'lb., 8. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 345 

armed companies had been formed some time before; milesfe he 
prevaricated wilfully, this version is purely Northern. He speaks 
of threatened Missouri invasions, but gives no intimation of the 
various movements of the several divisio'ns of the free-State army. 
Then be says, "The Southern States were being appealed to far 
and wide,''"° and the reader is left to infer that the North was 
quietly looking on in spellbound horror. An imimrtial, most cer- 
tainly "the best informed" and "best disposed," witness would 
at least have intimated the gathering of Sharp's rifles, cannon, 
and Northern munitions of war. 

In the paragraph before the second excerpt given by Professor 
Hart,, page 24 of the London edition, our "perhaps the m^ost im- 
partial contemporary" vouches this information : "In the meantime 
the Free-State delegates met at Topeka, organized the State Leg- 
islature, and made application to the federal power for the admis- 
sion of Kansas into the Union with a free constitution, and 
petitioned the President, although vainly, for protection from 
wrong. Their steadfast adherence to these peaceful measures, and 
their remarkable moderation in the midst of much that might 
have excited a spirit of resistance, was doubtless due to the peace- 
able policy ever counseled by their Commander-in-Chief and 
Governor, Charles Eobinson, whose wise cauijon preserved the 
Free- State party from doing a single act which might serve their 
adversaries ais a reasonable excuse for an appeal to arms." The 
glaring suppression of facts — and since we are told that he was 
"well informed" it must have been a suppression — brought out 
even alone in the official reports of the army officers on duty in 
Kanfeas in 1856, evidenced by these materially misleading asser- 
tions, needs no further comment. 

From the connection as given by Professor Hart on p. 118, 
where he has tlie ^dtness says, "Among the scenes of violence I 
witnessed," etc., one would think Gladstone an eye-witne'ss to the 
*-sack of Lawrence." But such wate by no means the case. He 
did not enter Kansas until the day after (p. 37), and for some 
days thereafter was in Leavenworth (p. 55). Not until page 59 
does this next to last excerpt begin, and it has no reference to 
Laiwrence; and certainly few Northern partisans will admit that 



"P. 115 of Hart's. 



346 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

any true phase of Kansas history indicates tliat the free-State men 
were "intimidated and over-awed." Next to the last paragraph 
Professor Hart cut his witness off rather 'soon for a just estimate 
of his true worth and value as historical evidence. Where the pro- 
fessor has those four omission period's, we read: "The policy of 
the Free-State pairty, prior to the 21st of May [1856] was one 
of determined non-resistance, the people being counseled to give 
no ground of offence or pretext for violence, and to seek a restora- 
tion of justice and order through legal redreiss alone.'' No state- 
ment could be further from the truth; resistance, armed resistance, 
Northern-supported resistance, unqualified repudiation, final con- 
flict with Federal authorities, marked every move of the free-^tate 
party at least for more than a year before the 21st of May here 
mentioned. Eead a little more even from Professor Hart's quo- 
tations: "guerrilla parties thought themselves justified in recov- 
ering stolen horses and other property" and "other acts of retalia- 
tion occurred"; "violence ensued." That the free-State "army" 
stole, hnrnt, murdered, and pillaged, and that they drove proslavery 
settlers "out of house and home" by armed mobs, — that they 
began and waged aggressive barbaric war, — ^and that their acts 
preceded rather than en'sued — that these truths may appear, that 
it may be seen ho\Y warped and how wanting in fullness Avere the 
evidences upon which anti-Southern feelings were formed; that 
it may be seen how the fanaticism of the North and the prejudices 
of a non-Southern world fed upon false information; that it may 
be seen that some endorsements of ante-bellum histoirical sources 
need to be taken with caution, — I have given this review by no 
means exhausting the defects in Mr. Gladstone's premises and 
conclusions. If more were needed, I might point to two or more 
instances without exhausting the list. Describing Missourians 
whom he says he saw returning from the "sack of Lawrence," he 
saVs, "... their faces unwashed and unshaven, still reeking with 
the smoke and dust of Lawrence, wearing the most savage looks, 
and giving utterance to the most horrible imprecations and blas- 
phemies; armed, moreover, to the teeth with rifles and revolvers, 
cutlasses, and bowie-knives . . . groups of bellowing, bloodthirsty 
demons.""' Of such, "moreover," he declares were most of the 



'"lb.. 39. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 347 

Southerners he found in the bordering parts of Missouri."^ Worst 
of all, he told the English people that this large Southern element 
was practically hopeless! Listen: "Having once been taught that 
robbery and outrage, if committed in the services of the South, 
were to be regarded as deeds of loyalty and obedience, these min- 
isters of a self-styled 'law and order' were slow to unlearn a 
doctrine so acceptable.""" Any man who would pen so black a 
slander on citizens of Missouri or any other part of the South, 
concerning them at any time in their history, most certainly de- 
serves any other fate than being placed among reputable Kansas 
"war" contemporaries. 

Most prominent among the bitter works which served to show, 
or give occasion for the manifestation of, the extent and character 
of the Northern frenzy, was the one which came from the pen of 
Hinton Helper, a degenerate son of North Carolina. His book 
was circulat<ed by hundreds of thousands. In it he proposed a 
plan to be enforced against the South requiring the immediate 
emancipation of the slaves, and that each emancipated negro 
shoTild be given sixty dollars by his former master. The white 
people of the South were to be proscribed from both society and 
church; they were not to be allowed to carry on commerce; and 
no Southern white man was to be given employment. If resist- 
ance to the execution of this plan was made, DEATH was to be 
the penalty. I shall give a few quotations from this book; and 
while these are being read, remember that it is not the mere ex- 
pression of the one man, — Northern leaders sanctioned and 
endorsed the proposed plan. It was endorsed by the Eepublican 
partj^, whose sworn leader, Mr. Lincoln, they as anti-slavery men 
had chosen to take the reins of government. The Speaker of the 
House of Representatives "and sixt}'-four of the leading Eepub- 
licans in the House and Senate showed what measures their party 
was determined to enforce against the South" by endorsing and 
helping to circulate Hinton Helper's Manifesto. As the work of 
one man, it would have soon gone down to deepest oblivion; as 
a witness through its champions who thus made it their own 
expressions, it will ever live as a potent deponent to justify the 



"8Ib., 106. 
"»Ib., 38. 



348 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

belief entertained by the South that the subversion of the govern- 
ment threatened her with dire and irreparable evils. 

Helper says in his preface that he does not con!sider his subject 
from its "religious aspect"; a statement with which all must cer- 
tainly agree, for the book savors of treachery and plutonic inhu- 
manity from beginning to end, — notwithstanding his profession 
of love for the South. He points oiit many things which, however, 
Avere unquestionably needed by the Southern people; but the 
proposed cure was infinitely worse than the disease. On page 328 
of "The Impending Crisis in the Soiith and How to Meet It," he 
says, "Compensation to the slaveholders^ for the negroes now in 
their possession! The idea is preposterous. The suggestion is 
criminal. The demand is unjust, wicked, monstrous, damnable. 
Shall we lick the bloodhoimds of slavery for the sake of doing 
them a favor? Shall we fee the curs of slavery in order to 
make them rich at our expense? Shall we pay the whelps of 
slavery for the privilege of converting them into decent, honest, 
upright men ? No, never." On page 363 : "Freesoilers and aboli- 
tionists are the only true friends of the South." On page 31 : 
"Down with the oligarchy. Ineligibility of slaveholders — never 
another vote to the trafficer in human flesh!" On page 381 : "Pov- 
erty, ignorance, and superstition are the three leading charac- 
teristics of the non-slaveholding whites of the South. . . . All 
are more or less impressed in a belief in witches, ghosts, and 
supernatural signs. Few are exempt from habits of sensuality 
and intemperance." On page 406 : " . . . newspapers and books 
seem generally ignored, and noisy discussions of village and state 
politics, the tobacco and cotton crops, filibusterism in Cuba, 
Nicaraugua, or Sonora, the price of negroes generally, and es- 
pecially of ^fine-looking wenches,' the beauties of lynch law, the 
delights of horse-racing, the excitement of street fightb with 
bowie-knives and revolver . . . constitute the warp and woof of 
conversation. All this is on a level with the general intelligence 
of the Slave States." Thus it is seen that he puts the general 
intelligence of the South at a point none removed from the con- 
dition of those who are generally and erroneously''" called the "poor 



"owaUer H. Page, The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths (1902), 122. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 349 

whites/'— a condition, as he pictures it, scarcely removed from 
those which prevail in barbarous communities. 

By way of parenthesis, it is interesting to contrast with tliii= con- 
tention of Helper's what intelligent Northerners and foreigners 
have said on the same point. Miss Hariet' Martineau, for instance, 
spent some years in the United States, part of which she spent in 
the South studying the people, their manners, education, and in- 
stitutions. She says, "If we reckon by numbers, there were cer- 
tainly more well-bred people at the North than at the South 
[because the population of the North exceeded that of the South] ; 
"but when we compare the cream of society in both sections, the 
palm must be awarded to the slave-holding community. The tes- 
timony of English gentlemen and ladies, few of whom have any 
sympathy with slavery, is almost unanimous in this respect." She 
spoke of the Soaithern people who lived at the same period as those 
of whom Helper professed to speak. Turning to Northern writ- 
ers. Dr. John Todd, who has not read and admired his helpful 
book? says, "We justly admire the easy, graceful politeness of O'ur 
Southern brethren.'"" Of the first settlers, both North and South, 
Fiske has testified "That the settlers of Virginia and New Eng- 
land were opposed to each other in politics, but they belonged to 
one and the same stratum of society, -and in their personal char- 
acteristics they were of the same excellent quality."'"' 

I shall give one more quotation from Helper's book, which shows 
that, having proposed that the slave-holding whitefe should never 
again be allowed to vote, hold office, or carry on commerce, ^ in 
case of resistance his plan was that the non-slave-holding whites 
were to help the "slaves 'cut their masters' throats.' Gathering 
his plan from page 149 we find that he proposes" ... a speedy 
and perfect abolition of the whole institution is the true policy 
for the South— and this is the policy which we propose to pursue." 
He says that if this cannot be done otherwise "the first battle be- 
tween freedom and slavery will be fought at home." In summing 
up the strength for this conflict, he concludes : "So it seems that 
the total number of actual slave-owners, including tlieir entire 
crew of cringing lickspittles, against whom we have to contend, 



"^students' Manual, 235. 

"=01d Virginia and Her Neighbors, Vol. II., 28. 



350 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

is but three hundred and forty-seven thousand five hundred and 
twenty-five. Against this army for the defence of the propagation, 
we think it will be an easy matter — independent of the negroes, 
who, in mine cases out of ten, would be delighted with an oppor- 
tunity to cut their masters' throats, and without accepting a single 
recruit from the Free State's, England, France, or Germany — to 
muster one at least three times as large, for its utter extinction. . . . 
We are determined to abolish slavery at all hazards." ISTot only 
in this extract, but throughout the book his proposition is plain: 
slaveholders shall free their slaves immediately, pay them a hand- 
some sum, be disfranchised, and take the most humble position in 
life, or their army of defence was to meet "its utter extinction." 
This meant a practical enslavement of the intelligent whites; 
which would have been accepted by the Southern people, such a 
condition, or utter extinction? "And yet, the leaderfe of the 
JSTorth, Messrs. Seward, Chase, Grreeley, Colfax, and their co-ad- 
jutors, endorsed Helper's book." When in the halls of Congress 
Southern Congressmen openly charged the Eepublicans with help- 
ing to circulate Helper's book, they dodged the issue.''*' It was 
the encouragement which such high endorsements gave these 
threatened insurrections, which made the danger of slave uprisings 
great and pressing. 

Turning once more to the writers of the North, we find on July 
12, 1858, writing to a friend Eev^ Theo. Parker said, "I should 
like of all things to see an insurrection of the slaves. It must be 
tried many times before it'suoceeds, as ai last it vmst."'^ Yet this 
is the man of whom Emerson — Ealph Waldo Emerson, essayist, 
minister, and Korthern leader, — known to every school boy and 
girl all over our Southland — said, "By the incessant power of his 
statement he made and held a party. . . . His commanding merit 
as a reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in pulpits — 
I cannot think of one rival — that the essence of Christianity is 
its practical morals.""' The South, then, was confronted — not 
by John Brown and his Harper's Ferry party alone — but by men 
"who could make a party"; and by those men who taught that 



^Cong. Globe, 36 Cong., 1 sess., Jan. 11, 1860, pp. 81- 
^Prothlngham, Life* of Parker, 475. 
'lb., 551. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 351 

party that a slave insurrection was a moral event to- be devoutl}' 
desired. Daily these contaminating and brutal influences were 
growing. 

IV. From the character of the men who assisted in the imme- 
diate attack on Har[>er's Ferry, we find that the poisoning influ- 
ence of the insurrectionists was reaching an educated, fairly in- 
telligent, and thus doubly dangerous white element. Brown's 
attack showed the So'Uth that when the insurrectionists talked of 
the death of the white slave-owner, they meant exactly what was 
said — his physical murder. The murder's and thefts which resulted 
from the attack told all too plainly how desperate had become the 
error-ridden JSTorthern abolitionists. 

With the details of Brown's immediate attack, I need not enter 
for the purpose of this discussion, — unless it be the briefest out- 
line"' His party left the Kennedy farm, where the final plans had 
been concluded, about 8 o'clock, October 16, 1859. Brown had re- 
turned from Philadelphia but two nights before. John Henri 
Kagi, some time representative of the New York Post, "Adju- 
tant-Greneral" and "second in command," was to take and hold 
Hall's Rifle Works. In the language of one of Brown's confed- 
ei-ates, "down the still road, dim white in the moonlight, amid the 
chill October night," John Henri Kagi, of the New York Post, 
late of the Kansas insurrection, and Aaron D. Stevens, also a Kan- 
sas insurrectionist, and who was known in Kansais as "Colonel 
Whipple," and for whom criminal warrants had been issued in 
Kansas,"' led tlie vanguard of what was meant to be the greatest 
slave insurrection of the world. John Edwin Cooke and Clias. P. 
Tidd cut the telegraph wires. Cooke left his home in the North 
some years before, and, with some money, went to Kansas and took 
part in the rebellion. Tidd had joined Bro'WTi at Topeka, Kan- 
sas, and had assisted in arranging for the Harper's Ferry attack. 
Jeremiah G. Anderson, who was an active member of the notorious 
Montgomery band which we saw operating in Southern Kansas, 
and who was with Montgomery when he fought the United States 
soldiers while in the discharge of their duty in Kansas, and a man 
by the name of Thompson, a product of the underground railroad 



"«See Col. R. E. Lee's Offlcial Report, Exec. Docs.. 36 Cong.. Vol. II., 19 ct seq. 
"7Kans. Hist. Cols., Vol. I., 244. 



352 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

movement, took pcssession of the prisoners taken. Albert Hazlett, 
who was also with the Montgomery band when it fought the sol- 
diers and fired Fort Scott in Kansas, and Edwin Copple (or Cop- 
pock) took possession of the United States armory, which contained 
near 200,000 stands of arms, which they hoped soon to have men 
to use.. Thus the product of the Kansas rebellion, which itself 
had been the product of the agitation by leading white men in the 
North, led the charge upon the little village of Harper's Ferry. 
Within a short time five iimocent persons had been murdered ; and 
had the movement had one-half the time for development that the 
Nat Turner insurrection had, or any O'f the other numerous slave 
uprisings, the Southern people would have been wiped from the 
map. The attacking party took the valuable silverware of Col. L. 
W. Washington, and took whatever else seemed to indicate useful- 
ness in war. In an interview published in the New York Herald, 
October 21, 1859, Bro'wn admitted these thefts and said, "We in- 
tended freely to appropriate the property of slaveholders to carry 
out our object.'''"" A northbound train escaped the investing party, 
and this spread the news of the attack. This timely information 
enabled tlie Virginia authorities and regular troops to arrive in 
tinue to strike down in its infancy what must have grown to a 
giant had the assistance which had been promised had time to ar- 
rive. 

V. Leaders and published literature mould the popular will, 
and a widespread popular sentiment, however full of error, nerves 
the daring and urges to action that numerous class, found in all 
communities, possessed of an inordinate and perverted thirst for 
fame and notoriety. Deeds of rashness, unchecked in their infancy, 
lead to greater iniquity. The deification of the variest plutonic 
chieftain augments the already -widening ripples of mental abrasion. 
Popular movements in the wrong direction, unless checked by tlie 
steadier of hand and cooler of perception and judgment, stop only 
after innocent victims, too often, glut the savage greed. By the 
time Lincoln had been declared elected the insurrection-abolition 
element of the North had behind it a popular approval, — generated 
by the turmoil and misinformation of the preceding years, — the 
product of illogical deductions, which made possible repetitions of 



"SHart, Welding of a Nation, 150. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 353 

Harper's Feriy in increasing numbers and rapidly growing sweep 
of devastation. Why did the South at the time feel that this was 
true? It was proven by the widespread popular ratification of 
Bro'\\Ti's attack. If the North had repudiated Brown and his awful 
attempt, the South might have forgiven them. This they not only 
did not do, but they left no doubt of their s}'mipathetic and unquali- 
fied approval. In various unmistakalDle ways the world was assured 
that had Brown succeeded, no matter if the destruction of the 
entire white population of the South had been the result, he would 
have been hailed as a hero and mounted upon a pedestal of honor 
and entwined with the garlands of honorable victory. When the 
news of the failure of his plan went abroad at the North, flags were 
half-masted, and the stars and stripes were put at mourning out of 
respect for a murderer. Numerous houses were draped in mourn- 
ing; prayer-meetings in manifestation: of sympathy on account of 
the failure of his scheme were held far and near. It was credit- 
ably reported that on the day of his execution the Legislature of 
Massachusetts came within two votes of adjourning as a token of 
s}Tnpathy and respect."^ Large gatherings all over the North lis- 
tened with respect and approval to speeches of defamation against 
the South. The words of Wendell Phillips, when bemoaning the 
fate to which failure had brought Brown, will be representative of 
such speeches. Taking Virginia as the object of his tirade, because 
it had fallen to her lot to execute a righteous judgment, he said: 
"Virginia is another Algiers. The barbarous hoard who gag each 
other, imprison women for teaching children to read, prohibit the 
Bil^le, sell men on the auction block, abolish marriage, and con- 
demn half of their women to prostitution, and devote themselves to 
the breeding of human beings for sale, is only a larger and blacker 
Algiers." James Eedpath and Frank B. Sanborn, both of Massa- 
chusetts, and Thaddeus Hyatt, of New York, refused to appear 
before the Senate committee which was making some effort to look 
into the connection which others had with Brown. The cornmittee 
succeeded in finding Sanborn, and had him arrested for the purpose 
of requiring his attendance before them. But a Massachusetts 
judge released him on a writ of habeas corpus. In the report of the 
committee they say that "Redpath, by leaving his State, and other- 



"^Burgess, The Civil War and the Const, Vol. I., 42. 
23 



354 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

wise concealing himself, successfully evaded the process of the Sen- 
ate/' John Brown, Jr., was wanted before the committee, but he, 
assisted by a nnmber of Ohioans, resorted to armed resistance and 
thus made his ^cape. In fleeing to save themselves or friends 
from the clutches of the law, evidence of no inconsiderable weight 
added, if possible, only deeper conviction of the correctness of the 
verdict wliich the South was about to pronounce. 

The North says Brown was a monomaniac. Was Binton? He 
was as guilty as Brown ; he had premeditated slave insurrection for 
years; he has seemed to be clothed in his right mind for these 
many years since those fearful days. Was Kagi? He was an ac- 
credited correspondent of the Post, an accredited Northern paper, 
for which he was "a vigorous writer," says Noble L. Prentis.'"" Was 
Aaron D. Stevens? As "Colonel Whipple" he manoeuvered the 
seditious troops in Kansas to the satisfaction of an abetting North. 
Was John Edwin Cooke? At one time he was a promising young 
lawyer. Hazlett and Anderson were said to be among the most bril- 
liant and cunning of the famously notorious Montgomery insurrec- 
tionists. Were they insane? To leave the immediate actors: Was 
Theodore Parker, D. D. ? He had devoutly, he tells us himself, 
wished for a series of slave insurrections. Was Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, or Chas. Sumner, or Henry Thoreau, or Grovemor John 
A. Andrew, or Senator Howe, or Ealph Waldo Emerson? They 
knew of Brown's plans; they kept his secret; some, most likely all, 
of them aided him. Were they monomaniacs? Emerson said: 
"It would be near the tnith to say that all the people, m. proportion 
to their sensibility and self-respect, sympathize with John Brown." 
On the day of Brown's execution a vast audience of sympathizers 
gathered in Tremont Temple, Boston. Hon. J. Q. A. Griffin, ad- 
dressing this body, said: "The heinous offence of Pontius Pilate, 
in crucifying our Saviour, whitened into virtue when compared to 
that of Governor Wise in his conduct toward John Brown." What 
was this conduct? The Governor had given Brown the fairest of 
trials — Brown himself admitted this'°^ — and had him defended by 
the ablest of counsel ; he gave more than reasonable time for appeal 
or action of the Legislature, which was then the pardoning power 



»»«Kans. Miscellanies, 07. 

"iHarfs Source Book Am. Hist., 295. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 355 

in Virginia in treason charges ; finally, Governor Wise allowed him 
to be hanged pursuant to law and verdict. Was GriflBn a mono- 
maniac? His audience received this declaration with approval: 
had a great and powerful body in the North become dangerous 
fanatics and monomaniacs ? If insane, so much the greater reason 
for Southern alarm and for the desire that the maddening agita- 
tion be stopped; if sane, only sane people commit or abet, or are 
accessories to, murder. 



XV. 

FROM HARPER'S FERRY TO THE END. 

THE LINCOLN REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS ABET THE TREASON IN 
KANSAS. 

VI. The Suhversionists at the Helm. 

Most of Brown's immediate folloAvers forfeited their lives at 
Harper's Ferry, while he himself passed into the presence of the 
Supreme Judge oi tlie Universe through an ignominious deatli. 
But the end was not yet. Eimboldened because in Lincoln's election 
every assurance had been given tliat the Federal Government would 
not interfere with their crusade, the abolition-incendiary-insurrec- 
tionists gave imdoubted evidence of a continuance of all phases 
of their fight against the South. The few months intervening 
between Harper's Ferry and the withdrawal of the South from 
what they maintained was but a nominal allegiance to a govern- 
ment which would not restrain infractions of the Constitution, nor 
enforce the will of the majority in the whole Union, were months 
of unabated prosecution from the North, and of unbroken suspense 
to the South. Some idea of the abolition movements may be gath- 
ered from the following from the New York Tribune, January 9, 
I860:— 

"INCENDIAEIES — WORSE AND WORSE.— Another 
freiglit of incendiary matter -wk& dispatched throughout the slave 
states yesterday by the New York Herald. It was composed of a 
summary, filling a page of that inflammatory journal, of all the 
slave insurrections that have ever taken place, with all their ex- 
citing and frightful details. It is an exposition going to show the 
slaves and disaffected poor whites in the South just what has been 
done, and what can be done again in the way of a bloody uprising 
to throw off the galling yoke of slavery. This exposition is accom- 
panied by commentaries to show how great is the apprehension and 
dread felt by the South of these fearful social convulsions, and 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 357 

what horrors they inflict and leave in their train. Tlie whole thing 
appears to be got up with the malevolent design of producing a 
repetition of the horrible scenes there depicted for the purpose of 
thereby gaining some political advantage over the Eepublioans in 
some present or future contest in tlie North. Tliis diabolical pur- 
pose peers through the whole of the exposition as it has done in 
the general drift of that newspaper for weeks. It discloses a 
depth of treachery to Soutliern society, for the mere chance of a 
contingent or remote political advantage in the North, which it 
would be difficult to parallel. We venture to say that the reckless 
malignity of the effort cannot be equaled out of the columns of 
the same journal.^'"' 

Hence, it was the continuation of the external infleuces which 
were brought to bear upon the negro that produced the most dan- 
ger. Fear of unaided or unincited slave uprisings had no very 
strong or widespread hold upon the Southern mind. It. was the 
growing numbei-s of what charity induces us to call the lunatic 
white abolitionists — men who could deliberately hack to pieces 
their fellow-men; men who could waylay soldiers of the United 
States and strew the prairies with their corpses; men who could 
steal upon United States forts in the blackness of night and com- 
mit arson to the imminent danger of shrieking women and weeping 
children; men who would rush over the North like flaming meteors 
arousing sympathy and gathering men and money in support of 
rebellion, treason, arson, murder, — and do this in abetment of 
armed marauding bodies which made travel alone upon the public 
highway suicidal, and that had driven women and children to 
wander alone and defenceless upon the open prairies, or to seek 
protection from savage Indians, as vouched for by a Northern 
Congressional committee."' — from a repetition of these barbarous 
brutalities the South asked to be protected. Of course, the younger 
reader not familiar with the history of that crucial period, nat- 
urally asks for the connection between Lincoln's party and such 
depredations. As a political part}-, it is but fair to inquire, what 
connection had the Lincoln party with the gathering of the muni- 
tions of war, with the rebellion against both Territorial and Fed- 



"2pike-s First Blows of the Civil War, 464. 

"^Reports of Committee, 36 Cong., 1 sess., Vol. II., No. 255, p. 



358 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

eral authority, — witli the murder of Federal soldiers upon the 
plains of Kansas? A very important connection. In the words of 
Congressman John B. Clark, used by him in a minority report to 
the House of Eepresentatives in 1860, Lincoln's party "voted for 
and passed through this House a bill relieving by its provisions all 
felons, horse- thieves, burglars, murderers, and even the Ossawa- 
tomie assassins, from all responsibility for their crimes which they 
had perpetrated in violation of all the laws of that [Kansas] Ter- 
ritory during a series of years. . . . This bill not only pardons 
every offence and crime known to the criminal calendar, which 
had been committed in any part of that widespread Territory, but 
it took the further unprecedented and most extraordinary step 
of giving to every person in Kansas entire immunity from every 
crime which they might thereafter commit against the laws of that 
unfortunate Territory." 

This is a grave charge, but hear the language of the law itself. 
It provides "that criminal prosecutions now pending in any of the 
courts of the Territory of Kansas imputing to any person or per- 
sons the crime of treason against the United States and all crimi- 
nal prosecutions, by information or indictment, against any per- 
son or persons for any alleged violation or disregard whatever of 
what are usually known as the laws of the legislature of Kansas, 
shall be forthwith dismissed by the courts where such prosecutions 
may be pending, and every person who may be restrained of his 
liberty shall be released therefrom without delay. Nor shall there 
hereafter be instituted any criminal prosecution in any of the 
courts of the United States, or of the said Territory, against any 
person or persons for any such charge of treason in said Territory 
prior to the passage of this act., or any violation or disregard of 
said legislative enactments at any time.'"" 

Thus the abolition-Eepublicans, who had control of one branch 
of the nation's governmental machinery, became the champions 
and protectors of those charged with treason, for in May previous 
the Grand Jury of Douglas county had found indictments against 
Charles Eobinson, ex-Governor A. H. Reeder, and others, charg- 
ing them with high treason. A few days after this action by the 
jury, Eeeder, in disguise, escaped into Illinois. 

'"lb., 51-2. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 359 

The bill is imquestionably the most remarkable to be foamd upon 
the records of Congress. Kepresentatdve Dunn had a pending 
motion '"to amend certain acts of the legislative assembly of the 
Territory of Kansas, and to secure to the citizens of the said Ter- 
ritory their rights and privileges/^ as be stated it. For this he 
substituted an amendment in the nature of a substitute for the 
original bill."' This substitute-bill (1) re-created the Territorial 
government of Kansas; (2) it kept up the discrimination against 
free negroes and mulattoes by making "every white male inhabi- 
tant" only, being a citizen of the United States over twenty-one 
years of age, an elector.'"" (3) It repealed the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill so far as that bill amnoTinced its non-intervention with slavery 
in the States and Territories, and so far as that bill left the "peo- 
ple thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic 
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of 
the United States," and instead thereof revived the Missouri Com- 
promise as contained in the eighth section of the act of March 6, 
1820, and made it of full force in Kansas and Nebraska."' (4) It 
relieved all Kansas criminals of all crimes whatsoever, either 
against the United States or Kansas Territory. 

TMs bill — this violation of the Constitution of the United 
States — a Stygian blot upon a nation's legislative records, — was 
sanctioned and passed July 29, 1856, by the Eepublican-abolition 
party, that party which, within four years as the Lincoln-Eepubli- 
can party, had captured the Presidency and other machinery of 
the Union. The vote stood 88 to 74."' 

The bill was reported to the Senate Aug. 11, 1856, whereupon 
Douglas moved to table — a quick and easy method of killing a bill 
or indefinitely delaying it. On this motion the vote was : Aye, 35 ; 
nay, 12, and so it was killed in the Senate. Those who refused tO' vote 
for tabling signified their endorsement of the bill either as it came 
to them or after some immaterial modifications. The Senators 
who thus went upon this ugly record were Bell, of New Hamp- 
shire; Collamer, of Vermont; Fessenden, of Maine; Fish, of New 
York; Foot, of Vermont; Foster, of Connecticut; Hale and Sew- 



T»=In full in House Journal, July 29, 1856, pp. 1309 to 1320. 
"«Sec. 5, p. 1311. 
"'Sec. 24, pp. 1319-20. 
"sjb., 1322. 



360 NORTHERN REBELLIO^ AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

ard, of New York ; Trumbull, of Illinois ; Wade, of Ohio ; Wilson, 
of Massachusetts, and Harlan, of Iowa."' 

Eestless to prevent an investigation of the guilt or innocence of 
the leaders of the rebellion in Kansas, only one week before this 
time Senator Wilson asked the Senate to pass a resolution which, 
while less sweeping in scope of benefit, was not less revolutionary or 
destructive of Constitutional safeguards. This influential Massa- 
chusetts representative, who stood in the front ranfe of his party 
until after the war, asked the Senate to pass this resolution : 

"Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed, to 
report forthwith a resolution authorizing the President of the 
United States to' direct the district attorney of the Territory of 
Kansas to enter a nolle prosequi on each of the indictments against 
Chas, Robinson, G. W. Smith, J. Jenkins, John Brown, Jr., H. H. 
Williams, G. W. Brown, and G. W. Deitzler for treason against the 
United States."'"" 

With the increased power which the victor^^ of the next four 
years gave the then dominant party, the last vestige of security war 
snatched from the South; revolution, ghastly, pale, his bony fingers 
scattering the fragments of a constitution to the blasts of an al- 
ready bursting storm, stood across the pathway of our republic. In 
the Senate, in the House of Representatives, among Northern State 
officials, negro insurrection had been taught, endorsed, and through 
such influences and the support of popular opinion at last at- 
tempted. NoTthem guns had carried Northern resolutions in Kan- 
sas ; President Lincoln had avowed that he could not give a better 
enforcement of indispensable Federal laws; in Virginia, John 
Bro'wn had plunged his Northern-made pikes into the hearts of 
whomsoever questioned his right of carnage, — in ratifying his acts 
the North had given greater evidence than ever of a continuance of 
the destroyers of the peace and happiness of the South. What was 
the South to do? The legislative record of the party then passing to 
power assured the lawless faction, large and dangerous, of immu- 
nity from punishment from whalsoevex crim^es they might commit. 
For less cause the colonies severed their connection with England ; 
their success brought applause. For less cause manufacturing New 



""Sen. .Tournal, 1 and 2 sess.. 34 Cong.. 554. 
sooib., 515. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 361 

England refused to stand by the Union in the War of 1812. In 
our own day the battleship Maine went down by an unfriendly 
hand, — ^her nam-e became the shibboleth which passed the American 
armies into Cuba. As a last resort, what did the South propose as 
a remedy? Let Eobert Toombs, whom Prof. Hart, oi Harvard 
University, describes as "an old-time Whig who sincerely loved the 
Union, and as an able lawyer understood the advantages of it,"'°' 
answer for us. In a speech of plain but prophetic words in the 
United States Senate in 1861, just before the final separation, he 
said : "Your party says that you will not take the decision of the 
Supreme Court. You said so at Chicago [in the platform upon 
which Lincoln was elected] ; you said so in committee; every man 
of you in both houses says so. What are you going to do? You 
say we shall suhmit to your construction.. .... It is admitted — 

you seek to outlaw four billion dollars of property of our people in 
the territories of the United States. Is not that a cause of war ? . . 

"You will not regard confederate obligations ; you will not regard 
constitutional obligations ; you vaW not regard your oaths. Wliat, 

then, am I to do? Am I a freeman? We have appealed, 

time and time again, for these constitutional rights. You have re- 
fused them. We appeal again. Eestore us these rights as we have 
had them, as your court adjudges them to be, just as all our people 
have said they are; redress these flagrant wrongs, seen of all men, 
and it will restore fraternity, and peace, and unity, to all of us. 
Eef use them, and what then ? We shall then ask you, 'Let us de- 
part in peace.' Refuse that and yO'U present us war.'""" 

The South sought to^ retire within her own castle. When the 
North refused her that only honorable course, and crossed her 
threshold to despoil her hearthstone, then Southern valor struck 
back; brave, loving, loyal, unconquerable women laid their sturdy 
warriors to rest here andi there thick over Virginia's hills, in her 
quiet valleys; or, further south, beneath the pines O'f Tennessee and 
Mississippi, or under the ma,gnolias of Georgia, or elsewhere amid 
Dixie's trembling palms, until Southern strength was no more. To 
the sleeping — of both sides — may the evergreen spring of acacia 
speak of hope in a glorious and undisturbed immortality and the' 



soiHart, Am. Cont. Hist , Vol. IV., 100. big. note. 

«f2Cong. Globe, 36 Cong., 2 sess. ; Hait. Am. Cont. Hist., Vol. IV., 171. 



362 NORTHERTSr REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

olive branch of peace proclaim, "EESCANT IN" PACEM ;" but to 
tbe living the harvest was left: in the North, undiminished re- 
sources, unchecked industries, unbroken commerce;*"^ in the South, 
for many long 3'ears a harvest of empty sleeves, and, worse, empty 
hearts and vacant chairs, demolished homes, annihilated indus- 
tries, — on every hand bleak, bloody, barren. Desolation sat upon 
the grave of a once happy land and looked heavenward with the 
mute inquiry, "How long shall the wicked flourish as a green bay 
tree?" To us now^ a harvest of precious memories, a soil conse- 
crated with the bravest blood ; a resuscitated land ; a race problem 
wliich cost 350,000 precious lives, millions of monej^, millions of 
broken hearts, — a problem no nearer solved than in the days of 
slavery. 

The Southern soldier went back to what had once been home, 
NOT through Northern charity or condescen^ding magnanimity. 
Even yet in the wake of the war such claims as the following re- 
main to bar the door to forgiveness: 

"Most of the officers of high rank in the Confederate army were 

graduates of the Military Academy at West Point Some of 

them, notably General Lee, rushed into the rebel service without 
waiting for the United States War Department to accept their resig- 
nation. But all such ugly facts were suppressed or forgotten in the 
extreme anxiety of the victors lest they should not be sufficiently 
magnanimous toward the vanquished." 

Or this : "No such exhibition of mercy has been seen before or 
since." 

Magnanimity and mercy, indeed ! Such extravagant declarations 
would be amiusing but for their frequency. The treatment of the 
people of the seceded States was neither magnanimous nor merciful ; 
it was DUE th'em to be treated like citizens of any part of the 
Union. What one is entitled to receive is not a matter of gracious 
condescension on the part of him who renders the due — it is the 
receiver's RIGHT. The Southern secessionists were neither crimi- 
nals nor ambitious revolutionists ; only such can be the recipients of 
mercy. The South chose secession not as an end within itself, but 
merely as the last available means for the preservation of most 
sacred rights. This legitimate choice involved many not of the law- 



•"'Grant, Personal Mem. 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 



363 



less Northern minority, which minority frequently lost themselves 
far from battlefields and merciless bullets, who had had no part in 
making the choice necessary. A nation staggered in mortal combat 
until out of the death-mould and the damp of the red field sprang 
a new life involving new conditions. Both sides paid as the fathers 
and mothers only of most of us can realize; yet the South felt that 
any other course would have cost both her political and personal 
honor. That the results of the conflict were what we find them by 
no means decides the right or the wrong of the one party or the 
other; the correctness and justness of the principles involved remain 
subject to the unprejudiced verdict of history. We honor our 
fathers for their choice, and fondly cherish the record of their un- 
paralleled valor; we revere our mothers for their Spartan devotion, 
and turn lovingly to their unmurmuring sacrifices which those of 
less grander qualities of heart or less strength of will would not 
have made. Had the bravest and brightest of us lived then, we could 
not have done more wisely or more honorably. Yet the South to- 
day stands second to no section in her devotion to the American 
Union. Across the hills of the not distant future even now begins 
to break the gray light of that day wliich Father Eyan saw with 
such sublime faith : 



The story of the glory 

Of the men who wore the gray, 
In their graves, so still; 
The story of the living, 
Unforgiven yet forgiving, 

The victims still of hate. 

Who have forever clung, 
With a love that will not die, 
To the memories of our Past, 

Who are patient and who wait 
True and faithful to the last, — 
For the Easter morning sky, 
When Wrong's rock shall roll away 

From the sepulchre of Right, 
And the Right shall rise again 

In the brightness of a light, 
That shall never fade away. 

Triumphantly and glorious 
To teach once more to men, 

The Conquered are victorious. 



364 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

The Conquered in the strife, 
Thro' their children yet shall reign 

By their patience and their peace: 
They shall fill the People's life, 
From Right's ever virgin vein, 
Witn the purest blood that flows. 
Made the purer by our woes, 

Without stain and without 
Till the children of our foes 
Shall be proud and glad to claim 

And to write upon one scroll 
Every dear and deathless name 

On our Southern muster-roll. 



NOTES. 

The Special Kansas-Congressional Eeport. 

In tlie text, some of the page references will not coTrespond to all 
copies of the special report. Most of the pages were originally taken 
from the copy in the Kansas City Public Library— to whose effi- 
cient librarian, Mrs. Whitney, and splendid staff I am indebted for 
numerous courtesies. That copy has a table of contents, and from 
it I took the rotation of witnesses whose eividence is abstracted. 
Afterwards I saw copies in Washington, in New York, and in the 
Georgia State Library. Neither of these had a table of contents or 
an index as to the contents of either report or evidence. There 
were some minor changes as to arrangement at least in one copy. 
Some of the pages refer to it, and so will not correspond with the 
others. I did not have an opportunity to compare all the printed 
proof with either copy, and it may be there are a few page-misprints. 
However, a ver}^ little search will locate any quotation ; and to the 
greater number the reader will turn -wdthout any difficulty. 

Election of March 30. 

(These observations are applicable equally to the first election.) 

Since no analysis of the numerous depositions concerning this 
election is here possible, in addition to the argument given, a state- 
ment of some fundamental rules will help us to see the error of 
relying upon the conclusions propounded by the majority report. 

The comparison, by the majority, based upon the census taken 
some time prior to the election, argues nothing — more especially 
when the discrepancy was explained by positive evidence of the 
temporary absence of many residents at the taking of the census. 
Were that not explained, the majority method can be of no legal 
or historical value. A similar and even more reliable method of 
finding illegal votes was used in the contested election case of 
Biddle et als. vs. Wing, in the Michigan Territorial election for 
Congressional representative in 1826. In that case the tax books 



366 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

were used. Said the committee of the House, "The discrepancy 
which is shown to exist between tlie poll -lists for the county of 
Wayne and the lists of persons assessed for county and territorial 
taxes, establishes little or nothing in the case.'^ Then, pointing 
out that many more had voted at a given point than even resided 
in that disti-ict or precinct, they said such fact did not argue that 
the excess was illegal, since citizens who lived outside of an election 
district might legally vote at some other point. {Contested Elec- 
tions H. B. U. 8., Vol. I., p. 511.) 

The extravagant claims in the majoxity report can be reached 
only by violating fundamental and long and well recognized prin- 
ciples for governing all properly conducted investigations. The 
matters under their investigation come under no class which can 
possibly be exceptions; no sane mind can possibly conceive of even 
a Congressional committee proceeding without something by which 
to be guided. The evidence they have left us is exempt from no 
scrutiny which the law and rational inquiry would not apply to any 
search for the truth. The conclusions of the historian, unless he 
can bring new light to bear, unless he can adduce facts not before 
the investigating tribunal, is just as much bound by the proper 
mode of procedure, and must abide by the conclusions to which it 
brings him, as though he were serving upon the original investiga- 
tion. 

In 1840 a contest went up to Congress from New Jersey. The 
committee but re-stated a time-honored rule in these words : "Mere 
hearsay djeclarations of the alleged voter, as to the fact of his 
having voted, have been uniformly rejected." {Contested Elec- 
tions, Vol. II., p. 24.) 

In a Pennsylvania case which came to Congress about the same 
time, the conmiittee said, "The rule upon which the committee 
reject all hearsay evidence they conceive too well settled and too 
clear and just to require any argument. If all experience has 
shown that if in the administration of justice in the most petty and 
trifling matters between man and man there is no security for truth 
without the sanction of an oath, every one must admit that in a 
controversy which enlists the strongest passions of our nature, often 
stimidated by ambition and party prejudice and animosity, we 
cannot safely dispense with this great security. If evidence of this 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 367 

character were received it might be manufactured with impunity 
and to any amount, and no representative could be secure in his seat 
for a single day." {11., 34.) 

In 1858 another committee laid down even more plainly the well 
recognized rules, and said that the only exceptions were those given 
in Greenleaf s Evidence — under none of which exceptions come the 
matters before the Kansas investigating committee. (/&., 364.) 

An application of these rules destroys much, and in some 
cases all upon which the majorit}' version depends, of their so- 
called evidence. For instance: The Lecompton legislature con- 
sisted of twenty-six members of the House. The majority of the 
committee Insisted on the illegal election of fourteen of these ; they 
admit the legal election of twelve {in how many histories do we 
find this fact?). The seventh representative district, composed of 
four voting places, or precincts : Bull Creek, Pottawatomie Creek, 
Big Sugar, and Little Sugar, was entitled to four representatives. 
These are put down as illegally elected. For this they rely upon 
the statements of six witnesses. The greater part of what these six 
men say is about thus : "I did not see" — "I think" — "they told 
me or said" — "I reckon" 

Look at Westf all's hypothetical and hearsay declarations: "I 
think there were three hundred" from Missouri — "I think nine- 
tenths of those who voted were residents of Missouri." — "I think 
he has never takeai his family to the Ter." — "I think I saw five 
hundred in the two camps." — "A great many told me they 
voted." {Evidence^ p. 235.) 

Take the next., Wilson: "I think there was but one white fam- 
ily^' before me — "I should suppose that there were not less than 
300 men there non-residents" — "they told me they were from 
Mo." — "They said they were coming to vote" — "Our settlers 
were from Mo., 111.," &c., "I think" — "Those I talked with said 
it was their intention" — "They said they had voted, though I did 
not see them vote" — "I do not suppose I saw more than twelve or 
fifteen men I knew to be settlers" [witness did not reach voting 
place until ten o'clock, how mamy residents had voted and had 
gone?] — "As near as I can judge from conversaiion" — "In my 
judgments free-State candidate had legal majority — "I thirik 
they all voted." {Evidence, p. 237.) 



368 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Take Gearhart: Saw a great many strangers from Missouri, 
'^but I did not see them vote" — "I should reckon there were 200 
persons I did know" — "I think there could not have been more 
than fifty voters in the precinct." — "I do not think there were 
ten from our neighborhood there [witness arrived at "10 or 11" 
and "staid at the polls only two or three hours"] — "I heard be- 
fore I started that Missourians were there" — ■ "I did not see any 
of the Missourians vote, though they said they voted" — "I do 
not know exactly, but I think Dr. Westfall lived in Mo." — "I do 
not think [Younger] lias any claim in the Ter." — "I never heard 
that his family lived in the Ter." {Evidence, p. 228.) 

This was their evidence of non-resident voters in the Bull Creek 
precinct. Apply the legal rules — those unquestioned guides which 
were followed before and which have been adhered to since the com- 
mittee in the Michigan case in 1826 said, "Indeed, nothing short 
of the impossibility of ascertaining for whom the majority of votes 
have been given ought to vacate an election" ; apply the rule used 
in the Pennsylvania case, where the committee said that if just such 
evidence as the above were to prevail "no representative could be 
secure in his seat for a single day" ; go to Kansas herself and apply 
the measure of validity announced in Gilliland v. Schuyler (9 
Kans. Rep., 569), where "it was held that statements of third par- 
ties as to the number of times and the names under which they 
voted was hearsay and incompetent" — and we cannot escape the 
conclusion that the Southern party had a legal majority. The 
returning board reported sixteen free-State votes for one Northern 
candidate and nine each for the other three; and nowhere can we 
find any evidence to show that any Southern candidate received a 
less legal, fair number; in other words, a legal majority is shown 
for the Southern candidates, and that is the test. (See also Mc- 
Crary's Amer. Law of Elections, p. 240.) 

This must suffice to illustrate the points at issue. The usual way 
of adding all estimated illegal votes, determined throughout the 
Territory by various incompetent witnesses, and then asserting, 
for instance, "6,218 votes were polled, mostly illegal ones by Mis- 
sourians," therefore the majority of thei Lecompton legislature 
were illegally elected , — is a fraus pia in historical method wliich 
will, likelv, never cease to burden our literature until the %lind 



NOETHERN KEBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 369 

bigotry of the doctrinaire which infects so many worthy persons" 
shall have passed into deserved oblivion. 

Slave Laws of the Lecompton Legislature, 

Perhaps no other code on earth ever met a stronger torrent of 
abuse than did the slave provisions enacted by the Southern legis- 
lature elected March 30, 1855. The provisions which met this fate 
at the hands of the North are those of the thirteen sections of the 
chapter on page 715 of The Laws of 1855. Briefly they are: 

1. Actually raising slave rebellion; 2: Aiding in raising slave 
rebellion; 3. Printing or circulating books to excite revolt, insur- 
rection, or conspiracy among slaves; 4. Stealing or decoying away 
slaves; 5. Aiding in same; 6. Bringing into Kansas a stolen slave: 
punishment on conviction of either of these was death or, in some 
cases, confinement in penitentiary; 7. Harboring or inducing 
slaves to escape; 8. Concealing slaves escaped from other States; 

9. Eescuing from officer escaped slaves: penalty, penitentiary; 

10. Eefusing to assist in capturing escaping slaves: fine, $100 to 
$500; 11. Printing in the State matter "calculated to produce 
a disorderly, dangerous or rebellious disaffection among the 
slaves;" 13. "If any free persons, by speaking or writing, assert 
or maintain that persons have no right to hold slaves in this ter- 
ritory:" penitentiary; 13. Persons conscientiously opposed to 
slaver}', or who did not "admit the right to hold slaves in this ter- 
ritory," were incompetent for jury service. 

Taken in connection with the then existing abolition conditions ; 
viewed in the light of the dangers actually menacing their lives 
by reasons of the abolition methods, and it readily is seen that 
these laws are merely protective and designed to be preventative; 
they imposed no restriction which actual conditions did not make 
necessary for the protection of life and for domestic peace even more 
than for the protection of property. They vindicated the dignity 
of the laws — since there were even those who taught that the 
Constitution of the Union had no binding power; they did not re- 
strain a proper discussion of the policy of abolition as a question 
which admitted the existing pro-slavery laws to be no less binding 
than any laws. 

The proA'isions of this legislature which affected the negro him- 
24 



370 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

self were liberal. Reaffirming the rules laid down by Congress in 
1793 and in 1850 for returning to otlier jurisdictions fugitive 
slaves, the legislature provided against the ahuse of the law or the 
kidnapping of free negroes : "No person sliall take or remove any 
such fugitive, or do any act toward such removal, unless" he shall 
fii*st have complied with the strict requirements of the law, under 
heavy penalty. 

This much-abused legislature did not stop at this. It went fur- 
ther, and in chapter 74 formulated a most remarkable law. It 
gave slaves, either resident or escaping from other States, privi- 
leges not even found in the national laws. This was ''An Act to 
enable persons held in slavery to sue for their freedom." It pro- 
vided : "Any person held in slavery may petition the district court, 
or judge thereof in vacation, for leave to sue, as a poor person, in 
order to establish his right to freedom." The court was required 
to see that such party had "reasonable liberty to attend his counsel 
and the court, and that he be not subject to any severity on ac- 
count of his application for freedom." Added to this was a liberal 
provision enabling the negro to appeal to the Supreme Court. 
{Laws of 1855, pp. 381-2-3.) 

Also, in happy contrast to the bitter anti-negro position of the 
free-State party, the Lecompton government opened its protecting 
arms to tlie free negro already in the Ten-itory in no small com- 
parative unmbers — the census of Jan. and Feb., 1855, reported 
151 free negroes and 192 slaves ; nor were free negroes from other 
jurisdictions forbidden the pursuit of happiness and safety under 
this government provided by Southern men for Kansas. 

Northern "Liberty Lav^s." 

Perhaps nothing else in Noirthem liistory illustrates more forci- 
bly the growth of the deep, bitter, uncompromising determination 
on the part of that section to nullify and override the Constitu- 
tion and all laws of Congress which did not meet Northern ap- 
proval, so much as do what writers usually denominate as "Per- 
sonal Liberty Laws." The various "liberty laws" passed by ten 
Northern States are such pronounced nullification that the reso- 
lutions passed several years before by a mere convention — haviag 
no such dignity as a legislative bod}' — of South Carolina become 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 371 

insignificant on comparison. These Northern laws involve every 
single element of the doctrine ol State secession. Not only are 
they nullification in design and secessionist in eflEect, but they repre- 
sent a minority clamor, which refused to submit upon any terms, 
and hence are rebellious ; while the secession of the South had tlie 
high justification of resting its demands, compliance with which 
would have prevented the move, upon the will of the majority of 
the entire people of the Union. The reason why the South's de- 
mands were not met was because the nullifying Northern faction 
had succeeded in muzzling the functions of the Government which 
was entrusted with the preservation of the Constitutional guaran- 
tees. Thus Northern nullification went unchecked and all of its 
oo-ordinate agencies were left to pour their hail of ruin upon Soutli- 
ern rights. i ! 

The purpose of this note is to let some of the "liberty laws" 
speak in tlieir own language. Follow the changes in Connecticut. 

In 1838 that State recognized the Congressional and Constitu- 
tional validity of the fugitive slave laws by providing for the re- 
turn of "any person, legally held to service or labor in any State or 
territory of the United States, [who] shall escape into this State." 
Should a jury be called to try the alleged fugitive, then this Con- 
necticut law said "that no person shall be qualified to sit as juror 
in said case who believes that there is not constitutionally, or 
legally, a slave in the United States." (This provision is strik- 
ingly similar to a jury provision passed by the Lecompton legisla- 
ture.) But in 1844 Connecticut passed a law forbidding a "judge, 
justice of the peace, or other oflBcer, appointed under the authority 
of this State," "as such" "to serve any warrant or process for the 
arrest" of any person "claimed to be a fugitive from service or 
labor as a slave, under the laws of any other State or country ;" all 
State officers were forbidden to issue certificates for the detention 
or removal of such fugitive, and such certificate was declared "ut- 
terly void;" "provided, that nothing herein contained shall be con- 
strued to impair any rights which, by the Constitution of the 
United States, may pertain to any person, to whom, by the laws of 
any other State, labor or service may be due, from any fugitive 
escaping into this State, or to prevent the exercise in this State 
of any powers which may have been conferred by Congress on any 



372 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 

judge, or otlier officer, of the United States, in relation to such 
rights. (Incorporated also in Statutes of 1854, p. 798.) 

This last not only withdrew the support of the State, but it crip- 
pled and virtually annulled the Federal law then in force, because 
of the fact that the Federal law had consigned much of its enforce- 
ment to State officers, relying upon the good faith of the various 
States to carry it out in their respective jurisdictions. Such laws 
as this helped to produce the necessity for the re-enactment and 
amendment of the Federal law as contained in the fugitive slave 
law of 1850. Therefore, it was the bad faith of Northern States 
which produced the law of 1850; and. not, as is sometimes claimed, 
the law of 1850 which caused the "liberty laws." The law of 1850 
merely put the North to looking round for more pronounced 
methods of nullification. This new method Connecticut devised 
in 1854 in "An Act for the Defence of Liberty in this State." 

This last legislation was a shrewd piece of nullification. It pro- 
vided a heavy penalty for falsely and maliciously representing a 
person to be a fugitive slave. When a party was so changed, "tlie 
truth of any declaration, representation or pretence, that any person 
being or having been in this State is or was a slave, o^wes or did owe 
service or labor to any other person or persons, shall not be deemed 
proved, except by the testimony of at least two credible witnesses 
testifying to facts directly tending to establish the truth of such 
declaration, pretence, or representation, or by legal evidence equiva- 
lent thereto." What the "equivalent" evidence was is hard to 
imagine, because : "Sec. 4. Upon the trial of any prosecution arising 
under this act, no deposition shall be admitted as evidence of the 
truth of any statement in such deposition contained." (Count. 
Statutes of 1855, p. 799.) 

The law was backed by a penalty of five thousand dollars and 
imprisonment for five years, No exceptions are made in case of 
actions before even Federal officers, or those proceeding imder the 
laws of the United States. This not only withdrew State support, 
but it made it an offence to proceed as per the provisions of the 
United States laws. The Federal law declared that on trial of 
a fugitive slave "satisfactory proof being made by deposition or 
affidavit in writing'^ duly taken, or by "other satisfactory testimony 
duly taken and certified" by the proper officer in the State from 



NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 373 

which the slave fled, certificate of removal should be given. But 
to make such proof by deposition, under the Connecticut law con- 
stituted an offence incurring an enormous fine and a term in the 
penitentiary. 

It will be impossible here to give more than one more represen- 
tative instance. It is from the legislature of A^ermont, at the Oc- 
tober Term, 1858 : 

"Resolved, That all laws of Congress which recognize the right 
of property in man, or deprive any person of liberty without due 
process of law and a jury trial, or provide that any person shall be 
delivered up, as owing service to another, without trial, are uncon- 
stitutional, void, and of no effect. 

"Resolved, That property- in slaves exists only by the positive 
law of force in the States creating it. The momecnt it passes from 
under the operation of those laws, it is property no longer. 

"Resolved further, by tlie Senate and House of Representatives, 
That the doctrine maintained by a majority of the judges of the 
Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott ... has no warrant in 
the Constitution, or in the legislative or judicial history of the 
country. 

"Resolved, That these extra- judicial opinions of the Supreme 
Court are a dangerous usurpation of power, and have no binding 
authority upon Vermont, or the people of the United States." 

With these fearful pronunciamentoes she coupled the most un- 
mistakable secession doctrine : 

"Resolved, That whenever the government or judiciary of the 
United States refuses or neglects to protect the citizens of each 
State in their lives or liberty, when in another State or Territory, 
it becomes the duty of the sovereign and independent States of 
this Union to protect their own citizens at whatever cost." {Re- 
solves of the General Assembly of Yt, Oct, 1858, pp. 67 and 68.) 
Even so! The Southern States each for herself exercised this 
eternal, inherent, inalienable right of an independent sovereign 
because Vermont and numerous other Korthem States denied the 
sacredness of the only possible common arbiter ; denied the binding 
power of the Constitution and laws of the nation's legislature; 
because Lincoln and the Republicans of his' administration per- 
mitted the Government thus to be insulted; because no hope of a 



37-1 NOEXHEEiSr REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

substantial character was offered that the mad allies of these nulli- 
f}ang and rebellious State governments would not continue to in- 
vade the South with servile insurrection, and overrun the common 
Territories with cannon and bayonet, borne by an emigration in- 
cubated by hoarded and often ill-gotten Northern wealth. These 
were the causes of the Civil War. The existence of President 
McKinley did not cause his assassination; the existence of slavery, 
or its use by the South, did not cause the Civil War. Had that 
good man never have existed he would never have been assassinated ; 
but shall we excuse the foul deed because it found something upon 
which to vent its fury ? Neither with justness can we hold slavery 
responsible for the awful civil and physical conditions which the 
North used it to produce. 



AUTHORITIES. 



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American Historical Association, various documents of. 

American State Papers. These are U. S. Government Records. 

This series of publications "contain reprints of the important documents of 
all classes from 1789 to 1833, and of some classes up to 1838, also many others 
which had never before been printed." The reprint was made necessary 
owing to want of proper supervision of the public printing during the early 
years of the government and the destruction of the Capitol in 1814. They " are 
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III. Finance: 1st to 20th Congress, 1st sess. 

IV. Commerce and Navigation: 1st to 17th Congress. 
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VI. Naval Affairs : 3d to 24th Cong., 1st sess. 
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IX. Claims: 1st to 17th Congress. 
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376 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

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NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 377 

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Senate Executive Documents, Vol. VI., No. 83 : 37th Cong., 2d sess. 
Flag of the United States dishonored by the African slave trade, in 

Sen. Docs., Vol. IV., No. 217: 28th Cong., 1st sess. 
Kansas, admission to the Union, *in 

Sen. Exec. Docs., No. 32 : 34th Cong., 1st sess. 

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1857, in 

House Misc. Docs., Vol. II., No. 43 : 35th Cong., 2d sess. 

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in 

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&c., in 

House Misc. Docs., Vol. II., No. 82: 34th Cong., 1st sess. 

Sen. Ex. Docs., Vol. VII., No. 21 : 35th Cong., 1st sess. 

Sen. Reports, Vol. I., No. 82 : 35th Cong., 1st sess. 



378 NORTHEEN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

House Reports, Vol. III., No. 377: 35th Ong., 1st sess. 

House Misc. Docs., Vol. I., No. 44 : 35th Ck)ng., 2d sess. 

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NORTHEKN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION, 379 

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380 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

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NOETHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 381 

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Thomas, W. H. The American Negro. 

Thompson, Maurice. The Story of Louisiana. 

Todd, C. B. The Story of the City of New York. 

Tomlinson's Kansas in 1858. 

Turnbull, David. Cuba (historic sketch). 

Tuttle, Chas. R. New Centenary History of Kansas. 

United States Charters and Constitutions. Compiled by B. P. Poore. 
United States Supreme Court. Reports of decided cases. 

Vermont. Acts of various legislatures. 

Walker, F. A. The Making of the Nation. 

Wanderer, slave ship. Richardson's Presidents' Messages and Papers, Vol. 

v., 534. 555. 
Washington, B. T. The Future of the American Negro. 
Webster, Daniel. Works. 
Weeks, S. B. Southern Quakers and Slavery. 
Wharton, Francis. Revolutionary Diplom. Correspondence. 



382 NORTHERN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 

Wilberf orce, Edw. Brazil ( sketch of ) . 

Wilder's Annals of Kansas. 

Wilson, Woodrow. Division and Reunion. 

Wilson, Woodrow. A History of the Am. People (1902). 

Wilson, Henry. Rise and Fall of the Slave Power. 

Winsor, Justin. The Western Movement. 

Winsor, Justin. Nairrative and Critical Hist, of the U. S. 

Wise, Henry A. Seven Decades of the Am. Union. 

Woolsey's Political Science. 

Wright, Carroll D. Industrial Evolution. 



The following, not regarded as necessary to sustain the conclusions in the 
monograph, nevertheless have a cumulative importance; and, of the many 
valuable Southern productions, these furnish some important light bearing 
particularly upon one or more of the various issues treated in the text : 

Bassett, J. S. Servitude in North Carolina. 
Bassett, J. S. Anti- Slavery Leaders in North Carolina. 
Brown, Alex. The First Republic in America. 

Bruce, P. A. Econom. Hist, of Va. in the 17th Cent. See Vol. II. for the 
history of early labor systems. 

Clayton, Victoria C. White and Black Under the Old Regime. 

The Alabama-Kansas movement did not leave the South until August, 1856 
This was more than a year after the emigrant incubator in the North began its 
work. The money contributed to the Alabama movement was used to buy 
homes, and the emigrants became bona fide settlers. Mrs. Clayton is an eye 
witness to this branch of the Southern emigration. 

Cobb, T. R. R. Historical Sketch of Slavery. 

Cooke, John Esten. History of Virginia. 

Curry, J. L. M. The Southern States of the Am. Union. 

Curry, J. L. M. Civ. Hist, of the Gov. of the Conf. Sts. 

Davis, Jefferson. A Short Hist, of the Conf. States. 
Dixon, Susan B. The True Hist, of the Mo. Compromise. 

Gordon, Gen. Jno. B. Remin. of the Civil War (1904). 

A noble worlc. See his reason for the fact that the South believed she was 
acting in self-defence. 

Grady, B. F. The Case of the South vs. the North. 

Hamilton, P. J. Colonial Mobile. 

Hodson, Joseph. The Cradle of the Confederacy. 

Useful for its political history of Troupe, Quitman, and Yancey. 

Ingle, Edw. Condition of the Ante-Bellum South: Manufacturer's Record, 
Feb. 10, 1903. 



NORTPIEKN REBELLION AND SOUTHERN SECESSION. 383 

"Le Commerce d' Amerique," &c. Lienden, 1782. 

VoL II. Is Interesting for its information concerning early cotton culture, 
slavery, &c., in the Louisiana country. 

Mason, Virginia. The Public Life of John M. Mason. 

Mississippi Hist. Soc. Publications. 

Montgomery, Frank A. Remin. of a Mississippian in War and Peace. 

Ttie writer was an Old Line Whig until the manner in which the North re- 
ceived John Brown's execution made him an avowed secessionist— a valuable 
witness to the South's fear of physical danger at the hands of a dangerous 
Northern party. 

Pickett, A. J. History of Alabam. 

Smith's Debates and Proceedings Ala. Secession Conv. 
Southern History Association (Washington) Magazine. 
Southern Historical Society (Richmond, Va.) Papers. 



